Some, including the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, are hoping Robert Mueller will tip the scales somehow so that everyone will be demanding impeachment after he testifies publicly before Congress on July 17. Those of us who are skeptical can be forgiven for not holding our breath until then.
Mueller has already said he would not be providing any new information in any congressional testimony he is called to provide. Democrats are hoping to refocus public attention on the 448- page lawyerly report Mueller wrote and Attorney General William Barr skillfully framed in pro-Trump format, leading millions to believe the Trump mantra of “no collusion, no obstruction.” Democrats justifiably want the public to understand that Mueller did not exonerate Trump, which, of course, he did not.
But after two and a half years of waiting—first waiting for Mueller to complete his investigation, then waiting for him to complete his report, then waiting for him to appear on national television to explain his report, and now waiting for him to talk even more about his report—we have a situation where the Democrats in Congress appear to be delaying and waffling on performing their constitutional duty to reign in a lawless president.
We don’t have to wait for Mueller to know what has to be done. First of all, he was an appointee of the very administration he was investigating. He was not an independent prosecutor like Leon Jaworski in the Nixon days. Nevertheless, if he can add to the long list of already existing proofs of why Trump should be impeached, it would be great. And the video of Mueller saying in his own words what he wrote in his report could well serve to push public opinion further along on the issue of impeachment.
The magnitude of Trump’s crimes is so great, however, that waiting for July 17th is unnecessary, and waiting until the next election is actually dangerous. Based on the clearest of evidence, we have no guarantee at this point that the 2020 election will even be a fair one. The government has done nothing to correct the problems outlined in the Mueller report. Nor has it done anything to reign in the home-grown attacks on the right to vote, including the trashing of the Voting Rights Act. Millions of voters, primarily African-American voters, have been and are being stripped from the rolls in state after state.
Even if we ignore the damning evidence against Trump in the Mueller report and the violations of the emolument clauses of the Constitution, we still see Trump violating the law every single day.
He has violated U.S. law by denying asylum seekers the right to come and apply for refuge in this country. He has illegally ordered that they be turned back at the entry points along the border, and one such family that was turned back last week paid the most awful price of that illegality.
When an El Salvadoran family fleeing violence was denied its rightful entry, they tried to cross the Rio Grande River this weekend. Oscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his 23-month old daughter, Valeria, drowned in the attempt. The little girl was tucked into the t-shirt of her dad as he desperately attempted to swim away from a past that offered her nothing into an unknown but hopeful future. She died with her tiny arm wrapped around his neck.
Her mother, Tania Vanessa Ávalos, is left mourning a lost child and husband. And back in San Martin, El Salvador, Rosa Ramirez has lost her son and granddaughter.
Trump issued his illegal orders, and people lost their lives.
Unfit as President of the United States. Unfit as a human being. Guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors. There is no time to wait, again, for Robert Mueller. He must be impeached now.
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