Kamala Harris Comes Down Hard On Trump After Mueller Press Conference

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Pressure in favor of impeaching President Donald Trump continues to grow across Congress, including now following an abruptly called press conference from soon to be former Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) issued a stern demand for Congress to begin impeachment proceedings very soon after that first public appearance from Mueller since be assumed the role of special counsel, sharing on Twitter:

‘What Robert Mueller basically did was return an impeachment referral. Now it is up to Congress to hold this president accountable. We need to start impeachment proceedings. It’s our constitutional obligation.’

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At Mueller’s press conference, he explained a few key takeaways from the Russia investigation he led, including, quite simply, that if his team had concluded the president was innocent, they would have said so, and the only reason they ended up boxed in and didn’t go the other direction and declare him guilty was because of standing Justice Department precedent against filing criminal charges against a sitting president. In the final report from his probe and during his Wednesday press conference, Mueller outlined that the legally mandated method for formally accusing a president of wrongdoing is impeachment, so when it came to Donald Trump himself, their hands were always tied — but those of Congress aren’t.

Harris is not alone in directly and explicitly calling for impeaching the president. Among Democratic presidential candidates, after reading through a redacted version of Mueller’s final report that the Justice Department made available, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) was the first to do so. At the time, she insisted that her call would not become a pillar of her campaign messaging but instead was simply suited to the situation.

So far, there’s only one Republican who’s made a similar call — Michigan Congressman Justin Amash, who held his first public event this week since calling for impeachment. At that town hall meeting — where he received a standing ovation — he claimed that some of his Republican colleagues support his position, but he didn’t name names and it’s unclear who that might actually be.

Trump has responded to talk about impeachment by asserting that there’s no grounds on which such a case could proceed, sharing on Twitter following the special counsel’s rare public appearance:

‘Nothing changes from the Mueller Report. There was insufficient evidence and therefore, in our Country, a person is innocent. The case is closed! Thank you.’

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That, however, is a gross misrepresentation of the situation. Mueller made abundantly clear how the case of a sitting president is different from the case of any other individual in the entire country. Even if there was a mountain of evidence with Trump’s name written all over it, Mueller could not have indicted him, but that says nothing about his guilt and whether or not there are grounds for impeachment.

As Amash put it following Mueller’s press conference:

‘The ball is in our court, Congress.’

Check out Twitter’s response below…

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