The defections have begun!
The first Republican member of Congress has joined the chorus of people calling for the impeachment of President Donald Trump.
The brave congressman who took this potentially politically fatal step for his future in the GOP establishment today is Representative Justin Amash (R-MI) who posted a lengthy Twitter thread about the conclusions he reached after reading the redacted version of the Mueller report available for every citizen to study and watching the actions of the Trump administration in trying to sweep its finding under the carpet.
Congressman Amash mirrored Attorney General William Barr’s initial letter summarizing his own takeaways after reading the Special Counsel’s report by sending a tweet that outlined his principal conclusions after fully researching the investigation.
Here are my principal conclusions:
1. Attorney General Barr has deliberately misrepresented Mueller’s report.
2. President Trump has engaged in impeachable conduct.
3. Partisanship has eroded our system of checks and balances.
4. Few members of Congress have read the report.— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 18, 2019
In comparing Barr’s principal conclusions, congressional testimony, and other statements to Mueller’s report, it is clear that Barr intended to mislead the public about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s analysis and findings.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 18, 2019
Under our Constitution, the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” While “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” is not defined, the context implies conduct that violates the public trust.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 18, 2019
In fact, Mueller’s report identifies multiple examples of conduct satisfying all the elements of obstruction of justice, and undoubtedly any person who is not the president of the United States would be indicted based on such evidence.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 18, 2019
While impeachment should be undertaken only in extraordinary circumstances, the risk we face in an environment of extreme partisanship is not that Congress will employ it as a remedy too often but rather that Congress will employ it so rarely that it cannot deter misconduct.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 18, 2019
We’ve witnessed members of Congress from both parties shift their views 180 degrees—on the importance of character, on the principles of obstruction of justice—depending on whether they’re discussing Bill Clinton or Donald Trump.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 18, 2019
America’s institutions depend on officials to uphold both the rules and spirit of our constitutional system even when to do so is personally inconvenient or yields a politically unfavorable outcome. Our Constitution is brilliant and awesome; it deserves a government to match it.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 18, 2019
Representative Amash’s analyses are incredibly damning towards President Trump and his own fellow Republican partisans who have been choosing to protect the president and their party over the rule of law and the Constitution.
His acknowledgment that the president’s behavior rises to the level of impeachable offenses breaks the dam of unanimous Republican solidarity that had even the harshest internal critics of Trump — such as Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) — refusing to make the leap from the president’s justice obstructing behavior as detailed in the Mueller report and obvious in Trump’s public words and actions to the principled stance that respect for the rule of law requires.
It remains to be seen if any other political leaders from the GOP will follow in Congressman Amash’s trailblazing recognition of the reality of the president’s criminal conduct and join what will hopefully be a flight of fleeing lemmings turning away from the political cliff that continuing to support Trump represents, but once the dam has been breached, the flood surely follows.
We eagerly await the deluge and welcome the sane, reality-based members of the Republican party to join the efforts to save our nation from the attempts to destroy our democracy through authoritarian anti-American, anti-constitutional methods!
#ImpeachNow
Follow Vinnie Longobardo on Twitter.
