House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested Wednesday that President Donald Trump is building his own case for impeachment by continuing to stonewall lawmakers in their demand for testimony and documents from the White House.
“He’s becoming self-impeachable in terms of some of the things he’s doing,” Pelosi (D-Calif.) said during a live interview with The Washington Post.
The speaker has consistently sought to tamp down talk among the Democratic caucus of impeaching the president, warning that the divisive process should not be taken lightly. On Tuesday and again on Wednesday, she said it was possible that Trump was looking to play on that division, “goading” Democratic lawmakers into initiating impeachment proceedings.
“Every single day, whether it’s obstruction, obstruction, obstruction, obstruction of having people come to the table with facts or ignoring subpoenas. Every single day, the president is making a case,” Pelosi told the Post’s Robert Costa.
The speaker had pointed out a day before that one of the articles of impeachment against former President Richard Nixon charged that he obstructed Congress, but on Wednesday she wouldn’t commit to that kind of a narrow impeachment push against Trump.
Pelosi also asserted that Attorney General William Barr should be held in contempt for his refusal to release an unredacted version of the Mueller report but stopped short of saying that he should be impeached.
While she acknowledged that certain parts of Mueller’s findings needed to be protected, she argued that lawmakers had tried to accommodate some of those concerns when the White House intervened.
“The accommodations the committee has tried to make, whether it’s about sources and methods … I appreciate protecting sources and methods, some law enforcement concerns. That’s not a reason to give us the report. It’s an excuse not to give us the report, because we all agree that certain things should be redacted,” she said. “But they were in the course of accommodations and boom — the administration just said ‘We’re going to make this executive privilege.’”
The House Judiciary Committee is set to meet Wednesday to vote to formally cite Barr with contempt for missing the committee’s self-imposed deadline for turning over the full report last week.
Pelosi noted that Wednesday’s contempt motion did not factor in that Barr refused to appear before the Judiciary Committee last week, objecting to being grilled by committee staff in addition to lawmakers. She took a swipe at Barr’s no-show, suggesting he felt “safer in the Republican majority in the Senate,” where he had testified the day before.
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine
Source: https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/08/pelosi-trump-self-impeachment-1311038
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The Article Was Written/Published By: coprysko@politico.com (Caitlin Oprysko)
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