Democratic presidential candidate and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker called on Congress to start impeachment proceedings against President Trump, a change from weeks of Booker stopping short of calling for impeachment.
“Robert Mueller’s statement makes it clear: Congress has a legal and moral obligation to begin impeachment proceedings immediately,” Booker said in a tweet Wednesday following a public statement by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Robert Mueller’s statement makes it clear: Congress has a legal and moral obligation to begin impeachment proceedings immediately.
— Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) May 29, 2019
In a press conference preceding Booker’s tweet, Mueller said that his investigation did not consider whether Trump committed a crime because Department of Justice policy says that a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime.
“And as set forth in the report after that investigation, if we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime we would have said so,” Mueller said.
Booker indicated that Mueller’s statements today prompted him to take the step to call for impeachment proceedings.
“Mueller said directly that it wasn’t for lack of evidence that criminal charges weren’t brought against President Trump — but because of Department of Justice policy. He made clear that it is the role of Congress to evaluate evidence against a sitting President and act accordingly,” Booker said in a statement. “Since the Mueller report became public, the president has consistently stonewalled Congressional oversight efforts and has made it nearly impossible to investigate serious open questions presented by the report.
“The president’s clear marching orders to Attorney General Barr and former White House Counsel Don McGahn demanding that they refuse congressional subpoenas is simply the latest example of the lengths to which this president is willing to go in order to prevent the American people from learning the truth.”
Booker had previously declined to follow the lead of primary rivals like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who have explicitly called on the House of Representatives to begin impeachment proceedings.
Earlier this month, Booker said that he wanted to see the underacted version of Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election and question Mueller before deciding whether Trump should be impeached.
At a campaign stop in Fairfield, Iowa, on Friday, Booker stopped short of calling for impeachment. “We have to be able to continue this investigation, follow the information where it leads,” Booker told reporters. “The right thing to do is for the House of Representatives, which should be holding the executive accountable, to do its job. Right now we’re seeing that being prevented, so everything should be on the table.”
In his public statement, Muller resisted requests that he appear before Congress to testify about the investigation. “The work speaks for itself and the report is my testimony. I would not provide information beyond that which is already public in any appearance before Congress,” he said.
