President Trump’s enemies want him to become the third president to be impeached, and even some Republicans say Trump is likely to be tarred with that odious designation.
“They certainly would have the votes to impeach Trump if they pressed for it, and I think they will,” said former Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., who introduced and successfully managed impeachment legislation in 1998 against President Bill Clinton.
“The president is not going to lose his base over this,” Barr said. However, “in order to win reelection, Trump is going to have to gain support beyond his base and that means focusing on substantive successes.” He urged a Republican messaging effort to brand impeachment as “purely political.”
Democratic leaders in the House are downplaying impeachment, but lawmakers led by Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, say they will force a vote, emboldened by special counsel Robert Mueller’s analysis of 10 cases of possible obstruction of justice. Trump is unlikely to be removed from office by the Republican-held Senate if he is impeached, but it would be a blow to his reputation.
Green, a low-profile lawmaker, forced two previous impeachment votes, which failed 364-58 in December 2017 and 355-66 in January 2018. The earlier version of Green’s bill listed offenses such as Trump criticizing NFL players for not standing during the national anthem.
“Impeachable offenses needn’t be ‘crimes’ under federal statutes,” said Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe, who calls Trump’s alleged obstruction of Mueller’s Russia investigation “manifestly impeachable,” despite Attorney General William Barr finding no crime.
However, Tribe said he disagrees with Green’s “overly broad definition of impeachable conduct.”
Despite base support, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in April that “if the facts, the path of fact-finding takes us there, we have no choice — but we’re not there yet.”
One Democrat who voted with Green’s earlier attempts, Florida Rep. Frederica Wilson, said she does not support speedy impeachment.
“As damning as the Mueller report is, I think that Democrats should let history be our guide. When Congress impeached President Bill Clinton, his job approval rating rose while the House’s suffered historic losses. We need to be on much more solid ground before we can convince the American public, including Democrats, that Mr. Trump should be impeached,” Wilson said.
But Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., who also backed Green’s earlier attempts, said, “It is clear from the Mueller report that the president and his associates have committed many immoral and possibly illegal acts. Now it’s Congress’ job to pick up where the special counsel left off with public hearings and investigations.”
For some outside advocates, the reluctance of top Democrats is infuriating.
“I’m losing patience with Democrats,” said Richard Painter, a law professor and former ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush who ran last year for the Senate as a Democrat in Minnesota.
Painter said it was a “bogus argument” to say Trump could not have obstructed justice because there was no underlying crime of conspiring with Russia, as the attorney general concluded.
“If there’s no underlying crime, you can’t lie to a police officer,” he said. Painter said that Trump allegedly ordering then-White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller is a top impeachable example. Trump denied doing that.
Painter believes Democrats are afraid of electoral losses. Barr, the former Republican congressman, said his party’s congressional losses in 1998 were attributable to scandals that invited charges of hypocrisy rather than the impeachment itself.
“They will continue to press for impeachment regardless of whether or not they can impeach. And I think they have the votes,” Barr said. “The goal of Democrats is to keep this issue alive.”
He added: “The Republicans need to do three things: prepare, prepare, prepare. If Republicans think this is going to go away, that the Democrats are going to go chasing after something else, they are mistaken.”
