Former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld said he was horrified by the Mueller report, but there are political reasons for not supporting impeachment of President Trump after the release of the Mueller report earlier this week.
Weld, the only Republican to declare a primary challenge to Trump, said that he believes the 10 episodes that could potentially be viewed as obstruction of justice highlighted in the Mueller report are deeply troubling and indicative of Trump’s inability to lead the country.
“When we finally got to read the report I was horrified by it,” Weld told ABC on Friday. “Despite the conclusions of no conspiracy with the Russians, there’s a whole lot in there about obstruction of justice … it’s rough stuff.”
But he also conceded that impeachment is not politically feasible because Senate Republicans would fail to meet the vote threshold, even if House Democrats were able to successfully move the articles of impeachment.
“I really don’t think so,” he said. “I’ll tell you why, it’s not for legal reasons, it’s for political reasons. The House could easily — there’s more than enough evidence, more than there was against President Nixon, and I worked on that case.”
“But the Republicans control the Senate, so it’s very unlikely that he would ever be convicted in the Senate where you need a two-thirds vote,” the former governor said. “So I can understand why Steny Hoyer said impeachment is not a good idea, for political reasons.”
Weld, 73, is the first major Republican challenger to Trump’s presidency. He served in the Reagan administration in various capacities from 1981-1988. In Reagan’s final two years as president, he appointed Weld U.S. assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s criminal division.
The Republican White House hopeful was later elected to two terms as the Republican governor of Massachusetts, serving from 1991-1997. He was re-elected by the largest margin in the state’s history in the 1994 election.
