Rep. Greg Steube appears on Neil Cavuto's "Your World" show.
Oct. 7, 2019, by David Silverberg
Of Southwest Florida’s members of Congress, Rep. Greg Steube (R-17-Fla.), has emerged as President Donald Trump's most vocal local defender and apologist.
Following the standard arguments used by Trump’s supporters, Steube argued on Fox News that Trump committed no crimes and does not deserve impeachment.
“…the Democrats will stop at nothing to impeach this president. And I think that's very clear at this point,” Steube told Fox News host Neil Cavuto in an Oct. 4 interview. Denouncing what he called “the Russian collusion hoax," Steube said “There is nothing in that transcript that I—that I have said—and I have read the transcript—that would be a high crime or a misdemeanor, that would be an impeachable offense. And none of the Democrats have articulated to me or to any of the American people what that specific crime, high crime or misdemeanor, would be.”
Steube reiterated those arguments in a second Fox interview on Oct. 6 when it emerged that a second whistleblower had come forward to support the allegations of the first.
Steube is a member of the House Oversight and Judiciary committees, which have jurisdiction over the impeachment inquiries now going forward. His mainly rural district covers most of Lehigh Acres, Port Charlotte, Venice and eastward as far as the northwestern shore of Lake Okeechobee.
Southwest Florida’s other two representatives, Reps. Francis Rooney (R-19-Fla.) and Mario Diaz-Balart (R-25-Fla.), do not sit on committees of jurisdiction and have remained almost entirely silent about the affair. Rooney, a former US ambassador to the Vatican, sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
When it came to Trump’s Ukraine phone call, Rooney’s only comment to date was jurisdictional: He signed on to an October 2 letter issued by Rep. Michael McCaul (R-10-Texas), the senior Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, complaining that the House Select Intelligence Committee was not allowing members of the Foreign Affairs Committee to be present when State Department officials were questioned about Trump’s Ukraine conversation.
(Commentary: Actually, because the House Select Intelligence Committee deals extensively in classified matters it usually does not allow members of other committees to attend its hearings, which are usually held in secret. In this instance, the Committee, chaired by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-28-Calif.), allowed one professional staff member from the Foreign Affairs Committee to attend).
Diaz-Balart has issued no statements and his office did not respond to inquiries about the issue.
This report will be updated as circumstances warrant.