Swalwell: Trump ‘makes us look like geniuses every day for impeaching him’

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) said in a new interview he thinks President Trump makes him and other House Democrats “look like geniuses” for impeaching him, especially in light of reports that Russians offered bounties to Taliban-linked fighters to target U.S. troops in Afghanistan. 

“I think he makes us look like geniuses every day for impeaching him,” Swalwell told the Yahoo News “Skullduggery” podcast in a new episode this week.

“He was impeached for putting his personal interests above the country’s. And again, it looks like that’s what’s happening here,” he added. “Now, if these allegations are true and the Russians are paying for the lives of American soldiers on the battlefield, the cost is the blood of our soldiers and I think the American people will understand that.”

Swalwell was a key player during the House impeachment inquiry as a member of the Intelligence Committee and helped organize the articles of impeachment against Trump. Ultimately, the Senate acquitted Trump on two impeachment charges surrounding his dealings with Ukraine, ending the historic, months-long battle over the president’s fitness to remain in office.

In the podcast, Swalwell compared Trump calling impeachment a “hoax” to his recent claims that Russian bounty intelligence is a “hoax” and said he did not believe that the president had not been briefed on the issue before.

“It’s certainly not a hoax,” Swalwell said. “This is information that went into the President’s Daily Brief. This is not the back of a bar napkin. He’s the commander in chief. The fact that he would not be told about this just, frankly, I think it’s bulls—.”  

The New York Times first reported last week, followed by several other news outlets, that the intelligence community concluded months ago that a unit within the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, secretly offered payments to Taliban-linked militants for attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan last year.