O’Rourke on impeachment: 2020 vote may be best way to ‘resolve’ Trump

Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) on Thursday appeared to back away from his calls to impeach President Trump, pointing to the 2020 election as the best way to remove him from office.

In an interview with “CBS This Morning,” the former Texas congressman, who announced his 2020 candidacy on Thursday, told Gayle King that the ballot box was “perhaps” the best place to take action against the president.

{mosads}It would be up to Congress, he added, to determine what the response to Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation of the president’s campaign and Russia’s election interference would be.

“How Congress chooses to address those set of facts and the findings which I believe we are soon to see from the Mueller report is up to them,” O’Rourke told CBS.

“I think the American people are going to have a chance to decide this at the ballot box in November 2020, and perhaps that’s the best way for us to resolve these outstanding questions,” he added.

The comments appeared to be a moderation of his stance enunciated last year during a CNN town hall, when O’Rourke called Trump’s defense of Russian President Vladimir Putin over election meddling during a joint press conference “collusion in action.”

“[And when in] broad daylight, on Twitter, he asked his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to end the Russia investigation, I would say that’s obstruction in action,” O’Rourke added last October.

The El Paso native was questioned by King over whether he still believes Trump colluded with Russia during the 2016 election, which the president has frequently denied.

“It’s beyond a shadow of a doubt to me that, if there was not collusion, there was at least the effort to collude with a foreign power, beyond the shadow of a doubt that if there was not obstruction of justice, there certainly was the effort to obstruct justice,” O’Rourke responded.

Announcing his campaign in a video message Thursday, O’Rourke joined a crowded Democratic field that also includes the likes of Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.).

O’Rourke challenged Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in last year’s midterms. Though he lost the election, the close race and his impressive fundraising gained him national attention.