A top Democrat vying to become the next US president has urged Congress to launch impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump in the wake of the Mueller report.
Kamala Harris said the report into alleged meddling by Russia in the 2016 election made it “very clear” that there was “a lot of good evidence pointing to obstruction of justice” committed by the Republican president.
“I believe Congress should take the steps toward impeachment,” Ms Harris told a CNN town hall meeting in New Hampshire last night. “I believe that we need to get rid of this president.”
The California senator’s plea underscores a growing split in the Democratic party over whether to try to oust Mr Trump as the race for the 2020 White House nomination gathers pace.
She was speaking just days after another Democratic White House hopeful, Elizabeth Warren, called on politicians from both parties to “set aside political considerations and do their constitutional duty”.
“To ignore a president’s repeated efforts to obstruct an investigation into his own disloyal behaviour would inflict great and lasting damage on this country, and it would suggest that both the current and future presidents would be free to abuse their power in similar ways,” Ms Warren added in a tweet.
However, the party leadership in the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives is taking a more cautious approach following last Thursday’s release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s redacted 448-page report, which found no evidence of collusion but highlighted instances where Mr Trump sought to use the power of the presidency to obstruct justice.
While accusing Mr Trump of “highly unethical and unscrupulous behaviour,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi today urged Democrats to hold off on moves towards impeachment and wait to see what is discovered in a series of Capitol Hill inquiries.
Mr Trump yesterday said he was “not even a little bit” worried about being impeached.
He tweeted: “There were no crimes by me (No Collusion, No Obstruction), so you can’t impeach.”
