Republican congressman Will Hurd said Sunday that lawmakers should investigate the "troubling" allegations in the whistleblower report against
President Trump but cautioned against a rush to impeachment.“Having laws in place to ensure that folks throughout the government are able to get to the right committees information where they think may be wrongdoing is important," the
Texas Republican said on CBS. "There are troubling issues within the whistleblower’s report, but they are allegations, and I think that’s why we should explore these allegations through hearings.”Hurd added that a top priority should be protecting the whistleblower, although he said he finds it "highly unlikely in this incredibly partisan environment" that the individual's identity will be protected, an "unfortunate" result.The former undercover CIA officer noted the secondhand nature of some of the whistleblower's information and said investigators must "be methodical" and not "rush it" in order to "get to the bottom" of the accusations against Trump.House speaker
Nancy Pelosi last week announced the launch of a formal impeachment inquiry against Trump, amid accusations that he withheld military aid from
Ukraine in an effort to prompt a Ukrainian investigation of
Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden."An impeachment inquiry, I think this is wordplay being used by Speaker Pelosi in order to placate some of the extreme wings of her party," Hurd said. "The last three times there was an impeachment inquiry of a president it was a vote on the House floor and it was done in a bipartisan way."“Anybody who thinks that we have enough information to make a statement on impeachment, that’s incredibly premature,” the congressman warned.Some
Democrats have been attempting to launch impeachment since Trump's inauguration, he noted.Hurd, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, also took a shot at committee chairman Adam Schiff, saying Schiff is conducting the impeachment investigation like a "tribal council on 'Survivor' and we're voting somebody off the island," referring to the hit reality television show.The whistleblower, an anonymous member of the intelligence community, is expected to appear soon before the intelligence committee.