Mueller statement ticks up impeachment push

But Democratic leaders aren’t swayed yet, even as the impeachment chorus in their caucus grew louder following Mueller’s impromptu statement. Instead, top Democrats, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have pushed for ousting Trump in the next election.

“He has given us an array of facts that we will take to the Congress and the courts as we go forward, as we investigate and litigate,” Pelosi told reporters last week after Mueller spoke.

The California Democrat suggested the House lacks a strong enough case to move forward with an impeachment inquiry. She has long warned fellow Democrats such a pursuit would ultimately be futile because the GOP-led Senate would not vote to eject the president even if the House had the votes to impeach him.

[Related: Pelosi uses Melania Trump’s family to slam president’s immigration plan]

Pelosi said “nothing is off the table” in remarks to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco last week. But, she warned, the House would first have to prove “such an ironclad case, that even the Republican Senate, which at the time seems not to be an objective jury, will be convinced of the path we have to take as a country.”

Pelosi’s leadership team is solidly in line with that thinking. Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said Mueller’s nine-minute statement on May 29, which mostly repeated the findings in his 448-page report, underscored the need for Mueller to come to Congress to answer more questions.

Hoyer signaled the House should continue to investigate the president through six oversight committees that are now conducting a broad array of Trump investigations.

“House Democrats will continue to fulfill our constitutional obligation to hold the Administration accountable,” Hoyer said in a statement.

While the Mueller report did not find that Trump’s campaign colluded with Russians to win the White House, it did not determine whether Trump tried to obstruct the two-year investigation into the matter.

[Also read: Democratic leadership sidestep impeachment calls after Mueller statement]

Democrats believe that Trump took illegal actions in an attempt to obstruct the investigation and that Mueller was prevented from finding him guilty of obstruction because he is the president. Mueller fired up those suspicions in his brief statement.

“If we had had confidence the president did not commit a crime, we would have said so,” Mueller said.

The line prompted an uproar among Democrats, who for weeks have voiced suspicions about Attorney General William Barr’s four-page summary of the Mueller report that appeared to clear Trump of any wrongdoing.

“Mueller made clear Trump is NOT exonerated and that AG Barr is a liar,” Waters tweeted. “Mueller did his job now it’s time for Congress to do its job.”

Many Democrats interpreted Mueller’s statement as a signal to congressional lawmakers to begin an impeachment inquiry, which is the only avenue for prosecuting a sitting president.

“We have to do what’s right,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., who is chairman of the powerful House Rules Committee, which is considered an arm of the speaker’s office.

[Read: Democratic candidates: Mueller remarks were an impeachment referral — so impeach]

McGovern and Waters are among several House committee leaders backing impeachment, which sends a powerful message to Pelosi that her top lieutenants are not satisfied with the pace of as many as 20 ongoing House inquiries into the Trump administration and Trump’s personal business dealings.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., and Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., are pushing for impeachment as well. Mueller’s statement, Nadler said, “has clearly demonstrated that President Trump is lying.”

But the calls for impeachment still represent the minority of House Democrats. About 40 House Democrats have declared public support for an impeachment inquiry. That’s less than a fifth of the entire House Democratic Caucus.

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., one of the most liberal lawmakers in the caucus, told CNN that Democrats should forget the futile impeachment route, which would be blocked by the Senate, and instead vote to censure the president.

The Senate in 1834 approved the only censure resolution against a president, voting 26-20 after a 10-week debate to censure President Andrew Jackson for failing to turn over a document read to his Cabinet. Jackson won a second term but sought, without success, a reversal of the censure vote.

“So it’s a big stain on the president, if we can pass a censure resolution,” Khanna said.