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Sen. Kamala Harris calls on Congress to take steps toward Trump impeachment
Sen. Kamala Harris late Monday said she would support Congress starting impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump.
That comes on the heels of fellow Democratic presidential contender Sen. Elizabeth Warren last week calling for impeachment.
“I think we have very good reason to believe that there is an investigation that has been conducted, which has produced evidence that tells us that this president and his administration engaged in obstruction of justice,” Harris said in response to a question at a CNN town hall in New Hampshire. “I believe Congress should take the steps toward impeachment.”
Harris, the junior senator from California and a member of the Senate’s Judiciary Committee and Select Intelligence Committee, said the report released following Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election made it clear there was “good evidence” to make a case for obstruction of justice.
“For those of us who have been following the investigation, and have seen any part of that report, it’s very clear that there’s a lot of good evidence pointing to obstruction and obstruction of justice,” said Harris, a former prosecutor who once served as district attorney in San Francisco and later as California attorney general.
Added Harris: “I believe that we need to get rid of this president.”
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Pelosi’s impeachment dam has been breached — The Washington Post
The Washington Post
Pelosi’s impeachment dam has been breached
Monday was the day House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had to know might be coming but did her best to forestall. It was the day the dam she had erected against the Democrats’ impeachment fervor was breached.
Despite polls long showing about three-quarters of Democratic voters favor impeachment, Pelosi and her fellow leaders had done a good job keeping their party’s congressional contingent unified behind a more cautious approach. While a handful of mostly backbenchers have kept beating the impeachment drum, it hadn’t really filtered up into the ranks of top leaders and presidential candidates.
After the release of the Mueller report, that’s changing. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was the first big-name 2020 candidate to come out in favor of impeachment, and on Monday Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) joined her.
In some ways, it’s a wonder it’s taken this long…
But while the vast majority of Democratic voters have told pollsters they favor impeachment, there hasn’t really been a national movement. Part of that was because everyone was waiting to see the Mueller report, and part of that was that there really hasn’t been a national leader for the movement.
Neither of those reasons applies any more.
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Paranoia, Lies and Fear: Trump’s Presidency Laid Bare by Mueller Report
In his highly anticipated report released to the public on Thursday, April 18th former FBI Director Robert Mueller painted a damning portrait of Trump in the White House outlining in a cinematic fashion 10 “episodes” of obstruction of justice evidence and jarring scenes of presidential scheming, paranoia, fear and fabrication of false record. (AP photo)
The Washington Post
The moment President Trump learned two years ago that a special counsel had been appointed to investigate Russian election interference, he declared in the Oval Office, “This is the end of my presidency.”
Trump nearly made that a self-fulfilling prophecy as he then plotted for months to thwart the probe, spawning a culture of corruption and deception inside the White House.
Trump’s advisers rarely challenged him and often willingly did his bidding, according to the special counsel’s report released Thursday. But in some cases, they refused when Trump pushed them to the brink of committing outright crimes.
Trump ordered Donald McGahn to instigate special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s firing, but the White House lawyer decided he would resign rather than follow through.
Trump urged Corey Lewandowski to ask then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to curtail the investigation, but his former campaign manager only delivered the message to an intermediary.
And Trump demanded that Reince Priebus procure Sessions’s resignation, but the White House chief of staff did not carry out the directive.
The vivid portrait that emerges from Mueller’s 448-page report is of a presidency plagued by paranoia, insecurity and scheming — and of an inner circle gripped by fear of Trump’s spasms. Again and again, Trump frantically pressured his aides to lie to the public, deny true news stories and fabricate a false record.
“If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state,” the report says. “Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment.”