Harry Reid now says that the House should open an impeachment inquiry against Trump. https://t.co/4nWkqZ6r2C
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) June 4, 2019
Note carefully, he’s not disagreeing with Pelosi — this is the next step in the essential choreography to block off every Repub bolthole:
Former Senate majority leader Harry Reid, who as recently as last month cautioned Democrats about the perils of pursuing President Trump’s impeachment, now says the House should open an impeachment inquiry that might or might not lead to a formal effort to remove him from office.
“It’s not the right thing to do nothing,” Reid said in an interview Monday with USA TODAY. “It’s not the right thing to jump into impeachment without doing an inquiry.”
The most important goal, he said, would be to “give the American people a view of what’s going on.”
The House could establish an impeachment panel to investigate the allegations that some say amount to the “high crimes and misdemeanors” necessary under the Constitution to remove a president from office. But such a panel wouldn’t necessarily vote to impeach Trump — that is, to approve Articles of Impeachment that would send the process to the Senate for a trial….
Reid’s comments are also notable because he had what he called “a front-row seat” at the nation’s last impeachment trial, when Reid was Senate minority leader. Then, the Republican-controlled House voted to impeach Clinton, but the Senate didn’t convict him in the trial that followed.
That impeachment effort rebounded politically against GOP candidates in the 1998 midterm elections.
Reid acknowledged the potential political blowback and the likelihood that the current GOP-controlled Senate would never vote to remove Trump from office…
In the end, he said, “I just think that Republicans are going arm-in-arm with Trump, right over the cliff.” But he said public opinion might be affected by a systematic effort to explore allegations that Trump tried to obstruct the special counsel’s investigation and engaged in other wrongdoing….
Pelosi told members yesterday that a concern of hers, re-impeachment, is lack of understanding by the public. Even the educated voters she meets around the country, she said, assume that once you being proceedings, Trump is immediately ousted from office. https://t.co/Jvu83Aye17
— Sam Stein (@samstein) June 4, 2019
Impeachment would be so easy though. https://t.co/hNsrheWSTE
— Molotov Frappuccino Thrower (@agraybee) June 4, 2019
Courts are more likely to enforce subpoenas like these once the hearings become part of an impeachment inquiry than they are as long as the House refuses to bite that bullet. As matters stand, it’s too easy to depict it as stonewalling v. footdragging.https://t.co/tI9I0eiZCa
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) June 4, 2019
Just think of what he’ll say if he’s exonerated in the Senate.
— Jake Snider (@jakehsnider) June 4, 2019
To illustrate how different politics was back then, this was Jimmy Carter's electoral map. pic.twitter.com/XDkYAsvi8H
— Molotov Frappuccino Thrower (@agraybee) June 4, 2019
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