Warren defends call for impeachment proceedings against Trump

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Monday defended her call for lawmakers to take up impeachment proceedings against President Trump, casting the matter as one of civil responsibility rather than political strategy.

“There is no political inconvenience exception to the U.S. Constitution,” Warren said during a CNN town-hall event. “If any other human did what’s documented in the Mueller report, they would have been arrested and put in jail. Obstruction of justice is serious crime in this country…Mueller believed he couldn’t bring an indictment against a sitting president. I think he’s wrong about that but that’s what he believes.” 

“I took an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States, and so did everyone else in the Senate and the House,” she added. “And I believe that every person in the Senate and the House ought to vote.”

{mosads}Warren’s comments came days after she became the first Democratic presidential hopeful to call for the House to initiative impeachment proceedings against Trump following the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report regarding the investigation into whether Trump’s campaign conspired with the Russian government during the 2016 election.

While investigators ultimately determined that they could not establish that Trump’s campaign colluded with Moscow, the report detailed several instances in which the president sought to interfere in the special counsel probe.

Mueller’s report did not accuse Trump of obstructing justice, but also noted that investigators could not exonerate the president.

Attorney General William Barr has said that prosecutors will not bring charges against Trump.

While that conclusion prompted several presidential contenders to call for a new round of congressional hearings into the matter, Warren went even further, calling on Friday for the impeachment process to begin.

In doing so, Warren waded into a topic that Democratic leaders and presidential hopefuls have long been loath to discuss. Some have warned that doing so could isolate moderate and independent-minded voters in 2020 and energize Trump’s base of support.

Warren, however, insisted that the question of impeachment was a matter of civic responsibility — a necessary process in the face of unusual allegations against the president.  

“If any other human did what’s documented in the Mueller report, they would have been arrested and put in jail,” Warren said Monday in explaining her decision to call for impeachment.

Politicians on both sides of the aisle, she argued, would ultimately have to take a stance on whether Trump’s behavior warrants removal from office.

“This is not about politics, this is about principle. This is about what kind of democracy do we have?”