Democrats have forcefully argued that there is significant evidence that President Trump obstructed justice but also that they are not going to pursue impeachment at this time. Their current position has become untenable.
If Democrats honestly believe Trump committed a crime and that only Congress can punish him for it, they have an obligation to pursue impeachment. If they don’t take that step, they should stop describing Trump’s actions as clearly criminal.
Following Robert Mueller’s announcement reiterating the findings of his report, House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., said that “obstruction of justice, of which special counsel Mueller found substantial evidence, is a serious crime that strikes at the core of our justice system” and that “the Constitution points to Congress to take action to hold the president accountable for his misconduct.”
He said: “Unfortunately, special counsel Mueller was unable to pursue criminal charges against the president because Department of Justice policy prevents a sitting president from being prosecuted.”
That policy in my opinion is wrong, but it prevented the special counsel from pursuing justice to the fullest extent possible. Therefore, as Nadler highlighted this morning, “it falls to Congress to respond to the crimes, lies, and other wrongdoing of President Trump. We will do so. No one — not even the president of the United States — is above the law.”
This would seem to be a call for launching impeachment hearings. Yet regarding impeachment, Nadler only said, “All options are on the table and nothing should be ruled out.”
When asked what that meant, he said, “We are following through on our investigation. We will continue to do so, and we will make decisions as they seem indicated.”
And yet, he also complained, “The president’s response to repeatedly lie to the American people and ignore all congressional subpoenas is immoral and unlawful.”
So, to summarize, Nadler is saying there is “substantial evidence” that Trump committed the “serious crime” of obstructing justice, that Mueller was “unfortunately” prevented from pursuing criminal charges, that this left it up to Congress to act, but that Trump is repeatedly lying and rebuffing efforts of Congress to investigate further. If Nadler honestly believes all of these things, the most logical next step would be for Democrats to launch impeachment proceedings against Trump to carry out their constitutional role. Yet, Nadler is still unwilling to go there.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has been more equivocal than Nadler, but she is still playing a similar game.
“The fact is, in plain sight in the public domain, this president is obstructing justice, and he’s engaged in a cover-up — and that could be an impeachable offense,” Pelosi said recently.
Yet after Mueller’s announcement, she said of impeachment, “The decision as to go down this path will be determined by the facts and where they take us.”
If it’s so obvious that Trump is obstructing justice and orchestrating a cover-up in “plain sight,” why does she believe the impeachment case is insufficiently strong? More investigation is unlikely to yield any additional facts on the obstruction front beyond what Mueller unearthed in two years with significant resources.
Democrats are clearly trying to perform a delicate balancing act. They want to placate the base of the party by acting sufficiently outraged at Trump’s conduct. But they are worried that impeachment does not yet have the necessary public support, is doomed in the Senate, and thus will backfire to Trump’s advantage. By taking a wait-and-see approach to impeachment, Pelosi and Nadler are essentially trying to keep pushing the question further down the road until they get to the place where the 2020 presidential race takes over. Then they could argue it’s too close to the election to pursue impeachment, and they will take the case to voters.
The potentially risky politics of impeachment, however, are not a legitimate excuse for House Democrats to avoid doing everything in their power to hold Trump accountable in the face of what they believe to be clear evidence of criminal misconduct. If they truly believe what they say about what the evidence shows, they should go through with impeachment. Even though Senate Republicans would inevitably block the move, they would at least be consistent. They could argue: Trump committed criminal acts and Department of Justice policy protected him from indictment, so we impeached him, but Senate Republicans protected him. Then they can take that case to the voters.
If, on the contrary, Democrats don’t actually believe there’s sufficient enough evidence that Trump is guilty of obstruction of justice at this time, then they should say that instead. But their current position cannot hold. The lack of follow-through on impeachment will only undermine their statements about the clear evidence of Trump’s criminal misconduct.
