Mueller Adds to Impeachment Fervor, But Democrats Won’t Move Fast
Mueller Adds to Impeachment Fervor But Democrats Won't Move Fast
(Bloomberg) -- Robert Mueller’s first public statement on his investigation of President Donald Trump raised more calls from Democrats for impeachment, but any formal proceeding is likely months away -- if it happens at all.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other party leaders are reluctant to pursue impeachment hearings, focusing instead on a slow windup of investigations by multiple committees. The House calendar could also delay the process, with members set to be away from Washington for big chunks of time for the rest of the year.
That could push any impeachment hearings into 2020, with the Republican-led Senate likely to acquit Trump in the end -- a troubling prospect even for Democrats in favor taking action against Trump.
“It would be very tough to start impeachment in an election year,” Representative Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat who sits on the Judiciary Committee, said.
An impeachment inquiry probably would take months to play out, stealing time and attention from legislation that Democrats want to use as political messages in their 2020 campaigns. It also would expose them further to attacks from Trump and Republicans that the process is politically motivated.
National polls show most of the public doesn’t currently support impeachment, and many Democrats share Pelosi’s concern that impeachment could backfire politically by animating Trump’s base. This would put some of the 40 Democratic freshmen at risk in next year’s election, especially those who represent areas where Trump is popular.
Calls for Impeachment
Mueller broke almost two years of silence on the special counsel investigation on Wednesday, and he mostly echoed the results detailed in his 448-page report. But he underscored that his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election didn’t clear Trump on the question of obstruction.
Mueller said Justice Department rules prohibit the indictment of the country’s chief executive, and “the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing.”
Seeing Mueller’s statement on camera prompted renewed calls among some Democrats for an impeachment investigation and inspired a few others to shift their stance and join in.
"Mueller’s comments were a plea for Congress to act – to take the facts as he laid them out, and do with them what he was not allowed to do himself – which is to hold the president accountable for his actions," Representative Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat, said.
Trump told reporters at the White House Thursday that he doesn’t see how Congress can impeach him because “there was no high crime and no misdemeanor.” He said impeachment is a “dirty, filthy, disgusting word.”
But it’s a word being invoked by a growing group of Democrats.
New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, one of the party’s 2020 presidential hopefuls, previously supported a slower approach, to conduct additional investigations before moving to impeach. But on Wednesday he said, “Beginning impeachment proceedings is the only path forward."
House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi also joined the roughly three dozen other House Democrats who were already pushing for impeachment.
Pelosi, along with some top lieutenants such as Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler, retained their public non-committal "all options are on the table" position, even as the calendar edges ever more closely toward summer.
Legal Victories
Pelosi on Wednesday said the House calendar won’t change her thinking on if or when to launch an impeachment investigation.
At an event at the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco, she reiterated that existing House committee investigations will continue. She pointed to recent legal victories supporting congressional demands for more information about Trump’s finances.
"Nothing is off the table, but we do want to make such a compelling case, such an ironclad case" for impeachment, that the Republican-led Senate will be convinced that it is the only path, Pelosi said, adding that "the case has to be very compelling to the American people."
Sarah Binder, an expert on Congress at George Washington University in Washington, says the decision on whether to launch an impeachment inquiry is "inevitably" a political decision, and that "the calendar surely plays a role."
"My sense is that an impeachment inquiry or hearings per se would take months, not weeks,” Binder said. “And that would push House Democrats right into 2020 when Democrats -- especially their leaders -- would rather be talking about policy issues in the run up to congressional elections not about President Trump.”
In the case of former President Bill Clinton, the House authorized its impeachment inquiry on October 8, 1998, and ultimately impeached him on Dec. 19, 1998. The Senate trial began on January 7, 1999, and it wasn’t until February 12 that the Senate voted on whether to remove Clinton from office, acquitting him on both articles of impeachment.
‘A Lot of Intensity’
Representative Gerald Connolly, a Virginia Democrat, said Mueller’s Wednesday statement added "a lot of intensity to that movement, toward impeachment." But Connolly also said he still aligns with those who say existing House committee investigations need to play out first, in part because those ongoing investigations touch on a broader array of topics, including Trump finances.
"There’s still a way to go," he said.
He adds that the House calendar -- which has lawmakers leaving Washington for the first week of July and returning for only three weeks before a longer recess set to last until the second week of September -- is not necessarily set in stone. And not all lawmakers must be in Washington for impeachment hearings, anyhow. "I wouldn’t rule anything out," he said, of potential summertime impeachment proceedings.
"The schedule be damned," agreed Thomas Mann, a congressional expert at the Brooking Institution, in Washington. He said the impeachment inquiry, likely to be televised, "will take months, not weeks," and that "nothing is more important for the country and for House Democrats."
To contact the reporter on this story: Billy House in Washington at bhouse5@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kevin Whitelaw at kwhitelaw@bloomberg.net, Joe Sobczyk, Anna Edgerton
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