Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a virulent critic of President Trump who opened her congressional career vowing to “impeach the motherfucker,” says she’s planning to introduce an impeachment resolution within weeks.
“Later on this month, I will be joining folks and advocates across the country to file the impeachment resolution to start the impeachment proceedings,” Tlaib, D-Mich., said Wednesday during a press conference.
Mentioning her fellow House Democrats, Tlaib said, “I think every single colleague of mine agrees there’s impeachable offenses.”
Impeachment is “one thing that we all agree on,” said Tlaib, one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress. “We may disagree on the pace.”
[Opinion: Byron York: House Democrats send message: Impeachment is on]
Tlaib said Trump’s impeachment and removal from office is warranted by his alleged violations of the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which bars federal officials from accepting gifts or benefits from other governments. Tlaib also said it was important to examine “how the president has obstructed justice.”
Impeachment talk is nothing new for Tlaib, who represents a Detroit-area district where Democrats have a 33-point party registration advantage on Republicans. On Tlaib’s first day in Congress, Jan. 3, she called for the impeachment of Trump in an Detroit Free Press op-ed co-authored with attorney and voting rights activist John Bonifaz.
That evening, at a reception put on by the liberal group MoveOn, Tlaib recounted a recent conversation with her son.
“Look, mama, you won. Bullies don’t win,” Tlaib recalled her son saying. She replied, “Baby, they don’t, because we’re gonna go in there and impeach the motherfucker.”
Democratic House leaders, reveling in their new majority status and eager to avoid impeachment talk, blanched at Tlaib’s profanity-laced statement and tried to ignore it. President Trump, asked about it the next day at a White House press conference, said, “Well, you can’t impeach somebody that’s doing a great job … I think she dishonored herself and I think she dishonored her family. I thought it was highly disrespectful to the United States of America.”
Tlaib’s impeachment resolution would be the third in the House, behind those offered by Democratic Reps. Brad Sherman of California and Al Green of Texas. Each one currently faces long odds, as a slew of Democratic committee leaders say they first want to investigate Trump’s administration and private business.
“I’m more concerned about his policy than his personality,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters last week. “When the facts are known then we can make the judgment.”
