Representative Maxine Waters, a Democrat from California and vocal opponent of President Donald Trump, said in no uncertain terms on Friday that Trump should be impeached, The Hill reports. Waters, in an appearance on CNN, said that the president has “done everything that one could even think of” to trigger an impeachment vote in the House.
Waters, who is also chair of the House Financial Services Committee, took issue, in particular, with Trump’s ties to Russia and his behavior surrounding Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian meddling in the 2016 election when Trump won the presidency.
“I’ve always believed that if the information about this president and his involvement with Russia and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and the oligarchs and the Kremlin and if we — but look at [Special Counsel Robert] Mueller’s report and see where he clearly defines that he’s obstructed justice, that people will increasingly come to the conclusion that impeachment is inevitable,” she said.
This is by no means the first time that Waters has made the case for impeachment and she stands out among many Democratic colleagues who remain noncommittal when it comes to the issue. In January of this year, she tweeted indicating that it was “past time for impeachment” citing what she called 8,000 documented lies chronicled as of that point in time.
Lock Mnuchin up! (And give Maxine Waters the key.) https://t.co/AsjmkEssx7
— Dana Milbank (@Milbank) May 14, 2019
More recently, Waters tweeted in March that Trump had repeatedly obfuscated the truth regarding Russian collusion and obstruction of justice, again questioning the president’s honesty, as well as his patriotism.
Also in her CNN appearance, Waters expressed hope that leadership within her own party would come around and get behind the concept of impeachment along with her. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, as recently as this week, has reinforced her own hesitancy to go down that road. Pelosi, so far, has consistently made the case for impeachment as an act of absolute last resort, suggesting that the Democratic Party focus instead on maintaining unity within the caucus and advancing the party’s policy agendas.
Waters said that while she wasn’t sure if Pelosi was warming to the idea of impeachment, the number of mitigating factors pushing her in that direction was likely becoming “overwhelming.” Waters, at the same time, predicted that the American people as a whole would indeed be supportive of impeaching the president.
In any case, as the situation stands today, even a successful impeachment vote in the House would not likely sway the narrowly Republican Senate such that Trump would be removed from office given current facts and revelations.
