WASHINGTON _ Several Democrats running for president demanded Wednesday that Congress immediately begin impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump, increasing the pressure on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has been reluctant to do so.
Half a dozen presidential candidates issued the demand just minutes after special counsel Robert S. Mueller III reiterated that his report did not exonerate Trump.
"If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so," Mueller said. He added that the Justice Department policy that forbids indicting a sitting president explicitly refers to alternatives.
"The opinion says the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing," he noted.
"What Robert Mueller basically did was return an impeachment referral," Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., who has previously supported impeachment, said on Twitter as she campaigned in South Carolina. "Now it is up to Congress to hold this president accountable."
New calls for impeachment proceedings came from Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and former Rep. Beto O'Rourke, D-Texas.
"We have one remaining path to ensure justice is served. It is our legal and moral obligation to hold those who have committed crimes accountable. It's clear that the House must begin impeachment proceedings. No one is above the law," Booker said.
He had previously said impeachment talk was premature.
O'Rourke, who previously said grounds for impeachment existed but left the decision to Congress, responded to Mueller with a more decisive call for Congress to act.
"There must be consequences, accountability and justice. The only way to ensure that is to begin impeachment proceedings," he said.
The onslaught of impeachment support from the 2020 contenders will undoubtedly increase pressure on Pelosi, D-Calif., who has thus far opposed starting an impeachment inquiry.
She has accused Trump of a "cover-up," but has argued that impeachment would be divisive without bipartisan support for the procedure.
So far, only one Republican member of the House, Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, and no Republican senators have supported impeachment proceedings.
But impeachment has become all but a litmus test for the progressive left, both among House Democrats and the 2020 field.
South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg said the question now lies with the legislative branch.
"The message really is, 'over to you, Congress,'" he said, in an interview with NBC News.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who was the first major 2020 Democratic presidential candidate to call for Trump's impeachment, said she was vindicated by the Mueller statement.
"Mueller's statement makes clear what those who have read his report know: It is an impeachment referral, and it's up to Congress to act," she said. "They should."
