A New Hampshire House committee on Friday voted unanimously against opening an impeachment inquiry into Executive Councilor Karen Liot Hill.
Republicans had targeted Liot Hill, the State House’s highest-ranking Democrat, for conduct the New Hampshire Attorney General’s office had already said didn’t amount to wrongdoing.
At issue is Liot Hill’s use of her Executive Council email to help a national Democratic law firm identify potential plaintiffs for a legal challenge to the state’s voter ID law.
But Deputy House Majority Leader Joe Sweeney, R-Salem, who has called for Liot Hill to resign, says she committed “political lawfare run out of a taxpayer-funded inbox.”
But at the start of a hearing on the bill that would open the impeachment inquiry, lawmakers heard that Sweeney had withdrawn his support for the effort.
In a statement to the Boston Globe Friday, Sweeney — who did not attend the public hearing — said he preferred to let voters determine whether Liot Hill should continue to remain in office.
“After reviewing the matter and hearing the discussion, I believe the appropriate course is to move forward and allow the voters and the political process to do their work,” he said. “The purpose of filing the resolution was to ensure that the constitutional questions raised were addressed seriously and transparently.”
Liot Hill had said that the impeachment inquiry was a blatant partisan attack. Speaking to the committee Friday, she told lawmakers she was eager to get back to work and put the matter behind her.
“I think that the sooner we can dispose of this, the better it will be for all of us, because i don’t think it’s a good use of any of our times,” Liot Hill said, with dozens of supporters standing behind her. “There a lot of other priorities that the people of New Hampshire expect us to be working on.”
The committee’s recommendation against opening the impeachment inquiry now heads to a vote by the full House.
The state Constitution allows public officials to be impeached by the House and tried in the New Hampshire Senate for “corruption, malpractice, or maladministration.”
But impeachments are rare. The last impeachment trial in New Hampshire was in 2000, when the House impeached and the Senate acquitted then State Supreme Court Chief justice David Brock.
Prior to that, the last impeachment in New Hampshire took place in 1790.
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