Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Kamala Harris (Calif.) praised GOP Rep. Justin Amash (Mich.) on Tuesday amid his calls for President Trump’s impeachment.
“What he has done is what we need more people in the United States Congress to do, which is to put country before party,” Harris told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell at a town hall in Spartanburg, S.C.
“The framers of our country, they designed a beautiful system in terms of our democracy,” she continued. “They presupposed in some branch of government there might be abuses. So they designed our democracy, our republic, in a way that there would be three co-equal branches of government, and then a free and independent press, with the idea that each would be the check and balance against the other.”
“So when we talk about the process of impeachment, it is about the checks and balances that the framers imagined would be in place to be a check against abuses, and that is another reason why I support that process,” she said.
Amash is the first Republican in Congress to call for Trump’s impeachment following the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.{mosads}
While Democrats have praised Amash for the comments, many of his GOP colleagues, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), have criticized him.
Amash, a founding member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, hit back at McCarthy and Republican leadership at a town hall in Grand Rapids, Mich., on Tuesday.
“I read the Mueller report. I’m sure he didn’t read it,” Amash said, referring to McCarthy. “He resorted to ad hominem attacks; that’s the kind of ‘leadership’ we now have in Congress.”