House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) had some interesting points to share about the impeachment process on Saturday during an interview with Joy Reid.
House Democrats are taking their time investigating President Donald Trump in order to build what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) says needs to be an “ironclad” case that will draw some bipartisan support in Congress.
Clyburn seconded her reasoning.
“I don’t think that those of us in leadership are saying that impeachment is not the answer,” he began. “I think from the report, from all that I’ve seen and heard for the last several years, I do believe that impeachment may be the answer. Those are the grounds. Now, the question then becomes what is the proper time for us to start this process. And I think that’s all Speaker Pelosi is saying at this point. We must take care that we do not get out in front of this process. Let’s continue to do what we’re doing. Let’s continue to do the investigations. Let’s have the hearings. Let’s build a public support. Let’s do what is necessary to bring the public along. And then we may have reached the time to launch the impeachment inquiries. I don’t think we’re there yet.”
Reid expressed concern that Americans will tone out the multiple committee hearings that are in process, which may leave them uninterested when an impeachment inquiry does begin.
But Clyburn noted that when Republicans impeached former President Bill Clinton, it was a partisan effort that ended up failing. He then pointed out that when Democrats investigated former President Richard Nixon, it was a different story because they proceeded the way House Democrats are proceeding now, and those hearings gathered enough evidence that an impeachment never had to move forward because Nixon resigned.
When it came to Richard Nixon several years ago, we never had to get to impeachment,” he said. “Because he stonewalled, he fired people, he did things on the same order that Trump is doing. But it finally caught up with him. When Alexander Butterfield reviewed — or revealed that those tapes were there and the court ordered him to produce those tapes, we reached the time for impeachment. And that’s in a bipartisan way that Congress went to him and says, either leave or be impeached. And he left.”
“We could very well through these hearings come up with that smoking gun that will do for us today what those tapes did with Richard Nixon before,” Clyburn concluded. “So let’s go through the process and hope that we can get there.”
Here’s the video via YouTube.
The question is will Republicans support impeachment after seeing evidence justifying it or will they continue to shield Trump from the rule of law? Of course, then it would be up to the voters to impeach Trump via the ballot box along with every Republican who failed to do their constitutional duty to remove him.
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