Conor Lamb vows to back impeachment

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  An-Li became a reporter while completing her law degree at Stanford. In law school, she wrote about housing affordability, criminal justice and economic development, among other topics. She also served as the intern to NPR Legal Affairs Correspondent Nina Totenberg in Washington, DC, helping Ms. Totenberg to cover the U.S. Supreme Court and other legal matters. Originally from Pittsburgh, An-Li interned with the investigations team at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette before joining 90.5 WESA in August

 Sarah Kovash / WESA

Democrat Conor Lamb represents Allegheny County suburbs and all of Beaver County in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Sarah Kovash / WESA

Democrat Conor Lamb represents Allegheny County suburbs and all of Beaver County in the U.S. House of Representatives.

(Undated) — Democratic U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb, of Mt. Lebanon, said Thursday he will vote to impeach President Donald Trump. House Democrats announced Tuesday that they would bring two articles of impeachment against the president, charging him with abuse of power in the Ukraine affair and obstruction of Congress.

Lamb is the seventh Democratic congressmember from Pennsylvania to support impeachment.

Two Democrats, freshman Rep. Chrissy Houlahan of suburban Philadelphia and fourth-term Rep. Matt Cartwright of northeastern Pennsylvania, have declined to say how they’ll vote.

“I think the articles were pretty carefully written and that they match the evidence that I’ve spent a lot of time reviewing,” Lamb said. “And so I intend to support both articles.”

While Lamb resisted calls for an impeachment inquiry after former Department of Justice special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian influence in the 2016 election, he said, “here the standard has been met by the evidence that we’ve all seen play out over the last couple of months.”

“Our main national security interest in eastern Europe is to oppose [Vladimir] Putin and the Russians,” Lamb added. And that’s why, Lamb said, Democrats and Republicans agreed to send military aid to Ukraine.

“When we took that vote and we approved the weapons to be sent to Ukraine, then find out that the president stood in the way of that and then instead of opposing Putin, he was opposing Vice President [Joe] Biden, that for me is when it goes from using his office to him abusing his office,” he said.

A House review of the articles of impeachment got underway Wednesday evening, and a floor vote could come as soon as next week. Lamb acknowledged that the Republican-controlled Senate is unlikely to convict Trump.

All nine Republican House members from Pennsylvania say they’ll vote against the articles.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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