Aug. 2 (UPI) — A majority of House Democrats are now in support of impeaching President Donald Trump, analyses revealed Friday.
The Washington Post reported that a statement from Rep. Salud Carbajal, D-Calif., pushed House Democrats over the 50 percent threshold. He cited testimony from special counsel Robert Mueller last week as his reason for being in favor of impeachment.
“In the past few years, our nation has seen and heard things from this president that have no place in our democracy,” Carbajal said. “We have seen Donald Trump and his allies invite meddling into our elections, we have watched our nation’s moral fabric rip apart and — most importantly — we have learned that our nation’s commander in chief evaded truth, encouraged his staff to lie repeatedly to investigators and engaged in obstruction on at least 10 occasions.”
Carbajal called Trump’s actions criminal.
“If anyone else did these things, they would face legal consequences.”
With Carbajal, 118 out of 235 Democrats now support impeachment.
Though majority support doesn’t necessarily indicate Democrats would be successful in approving articles of impeachment against Trump, the shifting tide could force House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to more directly address the issue, Politico reported.
Pelosi has been against impeachment, and in a July closed-door meeting, sources told Politico that she said the House needs more support from Republicans and the general public to kick off an impeachment inquiry.
No Republicans in the House have called for Trump’s impeachment, though Rep. Justin Amash, I-Mich., voiced support for it before he quit the GOP in July. After reading special counsel Robert Mueller’s report in May, Amash said he believed Trump “engaged in impeachable conduct.”
Though Mueller concluded there’s no evidence the Trump campaign colluded with Russian attempts to meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, his report detailed examples of possible collusion by Trump and his closest aides.
During a hearing before the House Committee on the Judiciary on July 24, Mueller said that because the law prevents a sitting president from being indicted, his team stopped short of assessing whether Trump committed a crime. He said it’s possible for Trump to be charged after leaving office, though.
On July, 17, the House voted to kill a resolution brought by Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, to impeach Trump in response to a series of tweets targeting four congresswomen that Democrats said were racist.
