Nadler: Trump making it ‘increasingly difficult’ not to impeach him

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) told CNBC Wednesday that while impeaching President Trump is “probably not” on the table, Trump is making it “increasingly difficult” to avoid.

Asked whether he agreed with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) that Trump was “self-impeaching” with his conduct, Nadler said Trump is “making it increasingly difficult” to keep impeachment off the table.

{mosads}“No questions are being answered about any subject. And then, when subpoenas are being issued, there’s a blanket command, disobey all subpoenas. Nobody should testify, and nobody should give documents to Congress,” he said.

Nadler also pushed back on Trump’s contention that a strong economy precluded the U.S. being in a constitutional crisis. “Whether the president is doing a good job in the economy or not is one question. He may be,” Nadler said. “But, if he’s destroying all the norms, and destroying all the practices, and destroying the laws, and arrogating all power to the presidency so that the people through Congress have nothing to say, that’s a very different crisis.”

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, Nadler said, presents “very strong evidence of a number of obstructions of justice,” saying that “of course” Trump has committed crimes while in office.

Nadler accused Attorney General William Barr of “misrepresent[ing] very strongly” what was in Mueller’s report, adding that either Barr is “doing whatever he has to do, to protect the president personally” or he genuinely subscribes to legal theories that the president cannot obstruct justice, which Nadler said “is a terrible doctrine because it would mean that you can’t investigate any president for doing anything.”

In a letter to Barr last week, Nadler said that Trump’s invocation of executive privilege to avoid turning over Mueller’s unredacted report and underlying evidence was a “direct assault” on the Constitution.

“The President’s pronouncement amounts to a direct assault on the constitutional order and on Congress’s constitutional oversight and legislative interest with regard to the President and his Administration,” wrote Nadler, who led his committee in voting to find Barr in contempt of Congress.