Michigan representative Justin Amash has become the first Republican lawmaker in Congress to acknowledge that President Trump should be impeached. The staunch libertarian, finally responding to the Mueller report in a series of tweets on Saturday, said he believed Trump’s conduct merited impeachment, argued that Attorney General William Barr “deliberately misrepresented” Mueller’s findings, and warned that partisanship has made Congress abandon the rule of law.
The ultraconservative congressman is one of the few Republican lawmakers who have been willing the criticize the president, though few have done so as consistently or vocally, and he’s one of the only Republicans who seem to have considered running against Trump in 2020. Now he’s endorsing an additional way of removing Trump from office.
In his tweets on Saturday, Amash explained that he came to four conclusions “after having read Mueller’s redacted report carefully and completely, having read or watched pertinent statements and testimony, and having discussed this matter with my staff, who thoroughly reviewed materials and provided me with further analysis.” Those conclusions were that:
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.
Amash, who is also an attorney, then went into more detail, explaining that “it’s clear that Barr intended to mislead the public” when he summarized the report, since it actually reveals that Trump “engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that meet the threshold for impeachment.”
“In fact,” he continued — echoing the opinion of many legal experts — “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.”
Amash also argued that the “extreme partisanship” in Congress has rendered it unable to fulfill its constitutional responsibilities if lawmakers are unwilling to impeach a member of their own party. Amash aimed this criticism at both Republicans and Democrats, accusing his colleagues of having self-serving standards about misconduct, and pointing out how lawmakers clearly didn’t take the time to read the redacted Mueller report that Barr released before taking a public stand about what it said.
The 39-year-old congressman, who was elected during the tea-party surge of 2010 and is a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus, is no stranger to standing alone on issues of constitutional principle, whether or not his views buck the Republican Party or its dear leader. The lawmaker so prides himself on his adherence to principle that he reportedly broke down in tears after accidentally missing one vote in Congress — the only vote he has ever missed. This makes him the most likely member of his party to reject Trump, and also to reject doing nothing about Trump’s misconduct.
Amash has expressed an openness to impeaching Trump before, and stood out among his GOP colleagues on the House Oversight Committee when it questioned Trump lawyer (and subsequent state’s witness) Michael Cohen earlier this year. While other Republicans on the committee used their time to attack Cohen’s credibility or defend the president, Amash was the only one who seemed at all interested in whether Trump had done anything wrong — asking Cohen, “What is the truth President Trump is most afraid of people knowing?”
Cohen drew a blank, but he could have said, “All of it” — if the stonewalling of House Democrats’ efforts to investigate the president is any indication.
But while Democratic voters and lawmakers are keenly interested in Trump’s transgressions, they are hardly united on the question of whether to impeach him. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has not ruled it out, but she has continued to resist what are now growing calls from Democratic lawmakers to begin impeachment proceedings. Instead, Pelosi has been pointing to the ongoing investigations into the president and promoting a wait-and-see approach. That decision is much more about setting the party up to defeat Trump in 2020, however, than it is waiting to see what additional information the more than 20 congressional probes turn up, if and when Trump and his allies are no longer able to withhold it.
Read Representative Amash’s full statement below:
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.
I offer these conclusions only after having read Mueller’s redacted report carefully and completely, having read or watched pertinent statements and testimony, and having discussed this matter with my staff, who thoroughly reviewed materials and provided me with further analysis.
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. Barr’s misrepresentations are significant but often subtle, frequently taking the form of sleight-of-hand qualifications or logical fallacies, which he hopes people will not notice.
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. Contrary to Barr’s portrayal, Mueller’s report reveals that President Trump engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that meet the threshold for impeachment. 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.
Impeachment, which is a special form of indictment, does not even require probable cause that a crime (e.g., obstruction of justice) has been committed; it simply requires a finding that an official has engaged in careless, abusive, corrupt, or otherwise dishonorable conduct. 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.
Our system of checks and balances relies on each branch’s jealously guarding its powers and upholding its duties under our Constitution. When loyalty to a political party or to an individual trumps loyalty to the Constitution, the Rule of Law — the foundation of liberty — crumbles. 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.
Few members of Congress even read Mueller’s report; their minds were made up based on partisan affiliation — and it showed, with representatives and senators from both parties issuing definitive statements on the 448-page report’s conclusions within just hours of its release. 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.
