Justin Amash launches a whole new smackdown on Donald Trump and his apologists
Over the weekend, Republican Congressman Justin Amash declared that Donald Trump has committed impeachable offenses, making him the first and thus far the only House Republican to call for Trump’s impeachment. Trump fired back on Sunday, while the other GOP members of Congress have largely tried to stay out of it. But now Amash is going after Trump again, this time in more direct fashion.
Donald Trump and a number of his allies have argued that because Robert Mueller found no chargeable crimes in the Trump-Russia election conspiracy, Trump’s numerous subsequent instances of obstruction of justice can’t be considered crimes either. But everyone with even an elementary understanding of the law knows better, and Justin Amash made a point of spelling that out today – along with reminding everyone that Trump wasn’t actually “cleared” by Mueller when it comes to collusion.
Amash tweeted a lengthy legal explanation, but here’s arguably the key passage: “People who say there were no underlying crimes and therefore the president could not have intended to illegally obstruct the investigation—and therefore cannot be impeached—are resting their argument on several falsehoods … In fact, there were many crimes revealed by the investigation, some of which were charged, and some of which were not but are nonetheless described in Mueller’s report.”
Congressman Amash then went on to explain why obstruction of justice is such a serious felony, whether or not there were underlying crimes. Finally, he points out that impeachment isn’t merely a legal question: “In fact, ‘high Crimes and Misdemeanors’ is not defined in the Constitution and does not require corresponding statutory charges. The context implies conduct that violates the public trust—and that view is echoed by the Framers of the Constitution and early American scholars.”
Over the weekend, Donald Trump (wittingly or unwittingly) elevated Amash’s relatively small platform by firing back at him on Twitter. Since that time, Amash’s total number of followers has climbed by roughly twenty percent. We’ll see if Trump keeps going back and forth with him. More importantly, with Amash very publicly taking the legs out of any phony legal argument that his House GOP colleagues might try to make in Trump’s favor, it places pressure on them to at least consider joining Amash in calling for impeachment – but don’t hold your breath.
