Senator Warren calls for impeachment of Trump
Senator Elizabeth Warren became the first 2020 Democratic presidential candidate to urge the Congress to initiate impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump following the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s redacted report.
The report was submitted last month to the Justice Department and was previously released as a much shorter four-page resume, redacted by Attorney General William Barr. The Justice Department concluded that there was no collusion.
While Mueller reportedly found no criminal evidence that Trump or his campaign aides colluded in Russian election meddling and did not recommend obstruction charges against the president, the 448-page redacted report released Thursday nevertheless paints a damaging picture of Donald Trump, referring to several cases where he urged witnesses to stop cooperating with prosecutors and asked aides to mislead the public on his behalf to hamper the Russia probe he feared would cripple his presidency. Mueller did find, however, that Trump made continuous attempts to interfere with the investigation but was largely foiled by those around him.
In a series of tweets, Senator Warren said that the numerous attempts of the president to obstruct justice cannot be ignored as they would create a precedent for future presidents. She it would be damaging to ignore a Presidents repeated efforts to obstruct an investigation into his own disloyal behavior and would give license to future presidents to act in the same way.
“To ignore a President’s repeated efforts to obstruct an investigation into his own disloyal behavior would inflict great and lasting damage on this country, and it would suggest that both the current and future Presidents would be free to abuse their power in similar ways,” she twitted adding that the severity of this misconduct warrants an action by elected officials in both parties regardless of their political affiliation in order to fulfill their constitutional duty.
“That means the House should initiate impeachment proceedings against the President of the United States,” Warren said.
So far, Senator Warren was the only Democratic candidate to call for impeachment of Donald Trump. Other 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls have not made similar proposals as candidates although many have demonstrated their willingness to support the idea. This may be due to the House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi’s outspoken position to not initiate any impeachment proceedings against the president.
