FARMINGTON — A Pleasant Grove father of four wants to know how he can tell his young children to have faith in democracy when the president actively invites foreign tampering with U.S. elections.
Mark Hughes posed that question to Sen. Mike Lee at a town hall Tuesday in Farmington. Lee took issue with the assertion that President Donald Trump did anything of the sort, and basically scolded Hughes.
“With all due respect, Mark, if you want your kids to respect elections, don’t go around telling them they can’t trust the elections. Don’t do that. That’s not right. It’s not accurate,” the Utah Republican said.
About 200 people filled the Davis County Library auditorium for the morning question-and-answer session that drew both cheers and jeers from a mixed crowd of Lee supporters and detractors. Much of the back and forth centered on constitutional issues.
Lee also met with Utah legislators in the in their Republican and Democratic caucuses Tuesday, though the meeting with the GOP lawmakers was behind closed doors. Applause from Republican House members could be heard as Lee stepped into the room.
Hughes found Lee’s answer to his question less than satisfactory. He said he would have liked Lee to better address the issue of the president’s interference and invitation for interference in the election.
“Don’t tell your kids you have to defend democracy? To me, that’s ridiculous,” he said. “Democracy is not something that doesn’t need protection. If I’m telling my kids that this is something they can just take for granted, that it’s going to be around until the day they die, then it will not be.”
In his opening remarks, Lee reiterated his belief that Trump did nothing wrong during his phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for which he was accused of leveraging military aid and a sought-after White House visit in exchange for Ukraine investigating former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, as well as alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Lee told the crowd he would defend his conclusion “to my dying day” that there was nothing impeachable in the charges leveled at Trump.
In response to Hughes’ question, he said he “completely disagrees” that Americans can no longer trust elections and it was somehow Trump’s fault. The president, he said, wanted to make sure the U.S. could trust the new regime in Ukraine before delivering $391 million in aid.
“I’m sorry, Mark, I’d encourage you to not tell your kids that they can’t trust U.S. elections because President Trump asked Ukraine to do what Obama had been telling Ukraine to do for years, which is investigate Burisma,” Lee said.
Hunter Biden served on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company, at the same time that his father was leading the Obama administration’s diplomatic dealings with Kyiv.
Lee said the impeachment process ensures that there will be an investigation into Burisma and the Bidens. He said he was surprised that House prosecutors spent as much as they did discounting the relevance of their dealings.
“By doing that, I think they pretty much guaranteed there’s going to be some congressional investigations into what happened there,” he said. “I hope they’re happy.”
Shanna Anderson, who identified herself as a college educated Latter-day Saint mother of two, asked Lee to respond to a recent Trump tweet regarding Attorney General William Barr.
“‘The President has never asked me to do anything in a criminal case.’ A.G. Barr This doesn’t mean that I do not have, as President, the legal right to do so, I do, but I have so far chosen not to!” Trump tweeted.
Barr ignited a firestorm last week after top Justice Department officials intervened in the sentencing of Roger Stone, a longtime Trump friend and former campaign adviser who was convicted of lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstruction of justice. Barr said Trump should stop tweeting about the Justice Department because his tweets “make it impossible for me to do my job.”
Anderson wanted to know if Lee believes the president has the right to interfere in criminal cases, especially those involving former associates, and how he would make sure the Justice Department remains unmoved by political sway.
Lee said he’s not sure what Trump meant by the tweet.
“That’s not something he ought to do. That’s something I’ll watch. I would strongly advise him against saying things like that,” he said.
Lee said Trump might be referring to the fact that the attorney general works at the pleasure of the president as do U.S. attorneys throughout the country. As a matter of law, he said, the president could remove any of them at any time.
In his meeting with Utah Senate Democrats, Lee talked about his recent vote to limit Trump’s ability to declare war on Iran. He was one of eight Republicans crossing party lines to pass the resolution that says Congress hasn’t authorized war in Iran and that congressional approval is needed to undertake sustained offensive military action against Iran.
Lee also fielded questions about medical marijuana and his vote last year against continued funding for 9/11 victims and first responders.
The senator said Congress needs to make it possible to study cannabis for medical research. A problem lawmakers might encounter, though, is losing support of states like Colorado that favor full legalization of marijuana, he said.
Lee, one of two senators who voted against the 9/11 responders bill, opposed vague funding language in the bill and wanted to ensure Congress maintains oversight.
“If all you do is say ‘such sums as may be necessary’ that creates other problems,” he said. “It creates moments for corruption and fraud, and at every moment where we’ve had to refill that fund for the 9/11 first responders, we’ve always done it. We’re never not going to do it.”
Contributing: Sahalie Donaldson, Katie McKellar