Rep. Al Green still pushing impeachment after Mueller findings
Congress’s leading advocate for impeaching President Trump said Sunday he’ll continue the effort in the wake of the Justice Department’s assertion that special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence the president colluded with Russia to sway the 2016 election.
Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) has maintained Trump is unfit for office based on a long list of the president’s statements and policy decisions that Green contends have sown racial divisions around the country.
Mueller’s findings, as summarized Sunday by Attorney General William Barr, are unrelated to that “bigotry,” Green said, vowing to keep up his fight to oust the president.
“#MuellersReport did NOT investigate bigotry emanating from the Presidency harming our country. The findings do NOT negate the President’s bigotry,” Green tweeted Sunday evening. “As long as bigotry influences the President’s policies, I will continue to seek his impeachment.”
He included a second hashtag: “#ImpeachmentIsNotDead.”
Green’s proposed articles of impeachment in the last Congress were a sweeping condemnation of the president’s character, arguing that Trump is “unfit to defend the ideals that have made America great.” As evidence, the articles cited Trump’s ban on immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries, his prohibition on transgender people serving in the military and his equivocal response to the deadly white supremacist marches in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, among a long list of other episodes.
Green has not introduced those articles this year but has said he intends to do so. He also has vowed to force the impeachment articles to the House floor for a vote, as he did twice in the last Congress. The second vote, in early 2018, attracted the support of more than 60 Democrats.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), backed by her leadership team, has long sought to tamp down any talk of impeachment, arguing the need to build bipartisan support for such a drastic and divisive step. For months, she also has cited the importance of allowing Mueller the time and space to wrap up his marathon investigation into Russia’s 2016 election meddling and whether Trump’s team conspired with Moscow during the campaign.
Following the release of Barr’s letter summarizing Mueller’s findings, Trump and his Republican allies quickly claimed victory, calling it a clear vindication for a president who has long characterized the probe as a “witch hunt.”
“It was complete and total exoneration,” Trump told reporters in Palm Beach, Fla.
The fight, however, is far from over. Democrats have been quick to point out that Barr’s letter quoted Mueller as saying the investigation “does not exonerate” Trump from allegations that the president obstructed justice. They’re calling for a release of the full report and its underlying documents to learn more about the meaning of Mueller’s cryptic determination.
Barr, in his letter, said that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein examined the obstruction issue and found the evidence “not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.”
Democrats are skeptical, noting that Barr is Trump’s hand-picked choice for attorney general and casting doubts on Barr’s credibility as a neutral arbiter.
“Given Mr. Barr’s public record of bias against the Special Counsel’s inquiry, he is not a neutral observer and is not in a position to make objective determinations about the report,” Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a joint statement following the release of Barr’s letter.
Outside groups agitating for Trump’s impeachment are also pressing for the release of the full Mueller report.
Tom Steyer, the billionaire environmentalist who’s traveling the country on an impeachment tour, said Congress should not be satisfied with “a 4-page summary written by a Trump appointee.”
“Mueller concluded that he could not exonerate Trump,” Steyer said Sunday in a statement, “and the American people deserve to know why.”
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