Knowing full well that the Republicans in the Senate and #MoscowMitch will never vote to impeach Trump, no matter how many more crimes he's shown to have committed, the Democrats have never the less been moving slowly towards opening formal impeachment hearings, and trying to do what they can in the courts to break the logjam of obstruction we've seen from this corrupt administration at every turn.
House Judiciary Committee Chair Rep. Jerrold Nadler spoke to CNN's Jake Tapper about their latest move where his committee will be working over the summer break trying to determine whether an impeachment inquiry needs to be formally opened, and Nadler shot down Tapper's assertion that Democrats are "trying to have it both ways" by opening an "impeachment investigation" as opposed to an "impeachment proceedings."
As Nadler explained to Tapper, they're simply doing their jobs trying to gather more evidence and educate the public on why Trump deserves to be impeached:
NADLER: No, we're not trying to have it both ways. We said exactly what we're doing. We're investigating the question of -- we're investigating the corruptions of the administration, the abuses of power, what Mueller showed, the possible violations of the emoluments clause, that might recommend articles of impeachment and it has been recommended to the committee and we're investigating to determine whether we should report those to the House and we're going to court to get more evidence.
TAPPER: I understand the role you need to play as chairman of the judiciary committee. But separately, I'm wondering your personal view as a member of Congress, do you personally support impeaching president trump?
NADLER: My personal view is that he richly deserves impeachment. He has done many impeachable offenses. He's violated the law six ways from Sunday. But that is not the question. The question is can we develop enough evidence to put before the American people who -- we've broken the log jam.
The and the Attorney General were lying to the American people saying that the Mueller report found no obstruction or collusion and exonerated the president. I think the hearing the other day was an inflection point because it showed quite clearly that the report did not exonerate the president. That it found that the Russian government tried to influence our campaign.
They interfered in our election, attacks our election and the Trump campaign welcomed that assistance and cooperated with the Russian government in trying to affect the campaign and the president lied repeatedly to the American people and to investigators and conducted a corrupt cover-up with at least five criminally indictable acts of obstruction of justice.
These are very serious offenses against the rule of law and we now have to get further evidence and put it before the American people as we consider articles of impeachment in the committee.
TAPPER: Do you think the president should be prosecuted after he leaves office?
NADLER: I leave that to a prosecutor after he leaves office but it is clear that -- well, let me put it this way. It is clear that if it weren't for the Department of Justice opinion that a sitting president cannot be indicted, this president -- anyone else who had gone what he did would have been indicted for at least five different major crimes.
And the president who is immune from prosecution by virtue of the justice department's saying that every president is immune from prosecution should be prosecuted after he leaves office or at least intervened and removed from office if you could prove those crimes.
Nadler also dismissed the notion that there's a deadline of September for his committee to act because of the upcoming presidential election:
So we have to do this, whatever time frame there is. And we're doing it now. We're engaged in an investigation into these different alleged crimes and into whether the president violated his oath of office to take care of the laws faithfully executed to the various abuses of power and we're looking into the articles of impeachment referred to the committee and other articles that might be drafted.
This is what Trump would love to distract us from with his racist tweets this week.
