'Would past presidents have been impeached?' floor leader asks

Party calls move a bid to influence Lee's ongoing trials

People Power Party Floor Leader Jeong Jeom-sik speaks at a national audit strategy meeting at the National Assembly on Friday. [Yonhap]
People Power Party Floor Leader Jeong Jeom-sik speaks at a national audit strategy meeting at the National Assembly on Friday. [Yonhap]

The People Power Party on Friday continued its sharp criticism of President Lee Jae Myung's remark that refusing to oversee and direct the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency constitutes grounds for impeachment, firing back that "it is this kind of conduct that would actually constitute grounds for impeachment."

PPP Floor Leader Jeong Jeom-sik, speaking at a national audit strategy meeting at the National Assembly that morning, pushed back against the president's position. "If President Lee's argument holds, should every past president have been impeached for not seating the head of an investigative agency at Cabinet meetings?" he asked.

Jeong said Lee's claim "falls apart at the very first question," adding that past presidents had kept the prosecutor general out of Cabinet meetings precisely to protect the independence and neutrality of investigations.

Jeong argued that Lee's push to seat the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency chief at Cabinet meetings was aimed at influencing the president's own ongoing trials. "Under the law establishing the agency, the relevant minister can direct the agency chief on specific cases," he said. "The president can convey matters related to state affairs through the competent minister."

"Even though such lawful and commonsense channels for oversight already exist, there is another reason behind the attempt to force the agency chief and the public prosecution chief into Cabinet meetings," Jeong said. "It is a calculated move to exert direct or indirect influence on the president's own trials."

Jeong recalled that at a Cabinet meeting in June, Lee had told acting Prosecutor General Gu Ja-hyeon that "if you've done something wrong, you apologize and withdraw it" — which Jeong characterized as pressure on prosecutors to apologize to Lee and drop charges against him. "For more than 500 days since taking office, President Lee has consistently devoted himself to a political jailbreak aimed at making five ongoing trials disappear," he said.

Jeong added that in September, Lee had called on the National Assembly at a press briefing to push for a special prosecutor probe — which Jeong described as a setup to drop charges under the guise of investigating fabricated indictments — and that the Democratic Party had responded by announcing plans to pursue such a probe after the national audit period.

Jeong characterized the effort as an attempt to "overturn his trials," saying Lee intended "to reverse the five trials against him through a pliant special prosecutor of his own appointment."

"President Lee is now even attempting to neutralize the Supreme Court chief justice's authority to recommend Supreme Court justices, so that he can handpick the judges for his own trials," Jeong said. "Forcing the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency chief into Cabinet meetings is part of the same pattern."

On the question of seating the agency chief at Cabinet meetings, Jeong said the move amounted to "an open, standing threat to pressure state institutions through the Cabinet." "This kind of conduct is precisely what constitutes grounds for impeachment," he said.

"Since taking office, the president has consistently piled one wrongdoing on top of another to cover up his crimes," Jeong said. "The tower of wrongdoing he has built will ultimately collapse on the president himself."

Jeong also weighed in on the failure to secure the appearance of witnesses — including presidential office chief of staff Kim Hyun-ji and former chief of staff Kang Hoon-sik — at the National Assembly's Steering Committee, calling it "in effect a confession to the various allegations."

"The Democratic Party says the opposition's demand for witnesses to appear is a political attack," Jeong said. "If so, the four — Kim Hyun-ji, Kang Hoon-sik, Kim Yong-beom and Jeong Jin-sang — should come before the Assembly and refute the opposition's claims. The fact that they won't do that is nothing more than a confession that they fear the truth coming out," he added.


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