Hillary Clinton Has An Unexpected Take On Impeaching Donald Trump
If you're holding your breath waiting on some impeachment news, I really can't help you with that. But, if it were up to former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, you'd be holding a while. In a recent op-ed for The Washington Post, Hillary Clinton warned against rushing to impeach Donald Trump, and she's speaking from experience.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report over possible collusion with Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign, as well as possible obstruction of justice, was released publicly on Thursday, April 18, and since then the conversation over the possibility of impeaching Trump has only grown louder. While Mueller's investigation found no evidence of collusion between the Trump team and Russia, the report alleges that Trump attempted to derail Mueller's investigation, and expressly did not exonerate Trump of obstruction of justice. Elite Daily reached out to the White House for comment regarding the details alleged in the report, but did not hear back. Now, the door is open for the House to conduct its own investigation or start impeachment proceedings, but Clinton thinks the former would be a much better move.
Apparently, Clinton thinks that anything less than a watertight case isn't worth moving forward with. In her April 25 op-ed in The Washington Post, Clinton wrote that Congress should "build" on Mueller's report by conducting its own investigation instead of rushing to impeach, citing her husband former President Bill Clinton's impeachment in 1998. In that case, the House voted to impeach, but Bill Clinton was not convicted by the Senate after the impeachment vote failed to cross the 67 votes threshold needed to remove a president from office. She wrote,
Congress should hold substantive hearings that build on the Mueller report and fill in its gaps, not jump straight to an up-or-down vote on impeachment. In 1998, the Republican-led House rushed to judgment. That was a mistake then and would be a mistake now.
Clinton went on to write that Mueller's report should be a "road map" for members of Congress on both sides of the aisle to follow carefully to see if it leads "to the eventual filing of articles of impeachment, or not." Elite Daily reached out to representatives for Clinton for further comment, but did not immediately hear back.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi seems to share Clinton's sentiment on impeachment. During the TIME 100 Summit on Tuesday, April 23, Pelosi told the crowd that she's not opening or closing the door on impeachment, but will instead let facts lead the way, according to TIME. Representatives for Pelosi did not immediately respond to Elite Daily's request for further comment about possible impeachment proceedings. She said,
[Impeachment is] one of the most divisive paths we could go down in our country, but if the path of fact-finding takes us there, we have no choice. We’re not there yet.
According to CNN, Pelosi penned a letter to House Democrats on Monday, April 22, where "fact-finding" was still the subject of impeachment talks. She wrote, "It is also important to know that the facts regarding holding the President accountable can be gained outside of impeachment hearings." She later added, in the same bipartisan vein that Clinton had in her op-ed, that their mission is to "uncover the truth" free from "passion or prejudice." Representatives for Pelosi did not immediately respond to Elite Daily's request for further details about the letter.
I don't know what's going to happen, but it looks like there's a heavy lean on taking the slow route to impeachment.
