House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) told reporters Thursday that House Democrat leaders are using the partisan impeachment inquiry to help decide who will be the next president of the United States, suggesting the probe will interfere with the 2020 elections.

While briefing reporters in the wake of the House Democrat’s approval, along party lines, of the impeachment inquiry resolution, Scalise declared:

If you look at where we are at right now, we’re at an important point in history. Clearly, there are people that we serve with that don’t like the results of the 2016 election — that’s their prerogative — but the country next year will be deciding who our president is going to be. It should not be Nancy Pelosi and a small group of people that she selects that get to determine who’s going to be our president.

He went on to say that Democrats are not interested in getting to the bottom of the allegations that triggered the impeachment effort. Instead, their focus is solely on removing President Donald Trump from office and overturning the results of the 2016 elections, Scalise indicated.

the Lousiana Republican said:

They don’t really want to get to the truth. They want to remove a sitting president. In fact, the author of the articles of impeachment [Democrat Rep. Al Green from Texas] said, ‘if they don’t impeach the president, he will get re-elected.’ Now that’s not why we have impeachment.

“It’s a tainted process,” he added, referring to the impeachment probe.

House Democrats pursuing the impeachment inquiry are supposed to be trying to determine if Trump abused his power by pushing Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in exchange for aid.

At the center of the impeachment inquiry is a complaint filed by an allegedly partisan “whistleblower” accusing Trump of a quid pro quo offer in which the president attempted to pressure Ukraine to launch a probe into the Bidens during a July 25 call in return for security assistance. Trump and Ukraine have denied the allegation.

Democrats have accused Trump of trying to influence the upcoming 2020 presidential elections by urging Ukraine to investigate his political rival — White House hopeful Biden. Breitbart News has noted, however, that in an ironic twist, the House Democrats’ impeachment probe itself is influencing the ongoing presidential race.

Until the vote takes place, it will remain unclear whether the impeachment probe will benefit or hurt Trump at the polls.

House Democrats launched the impeachment inquiry on September 24, a little over a year before the American public goes to the polls to elect the next president in November 2020.