Democratic House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler said Monday that President Donald Trump should be impeached in order “to vindicate the Constitution.”
“Personally, I think the president ought to be impeached,” Nadler said in an interview with WNYC.
“Impeachment is imperative not because he’s going to be removed from office. The Senate won’t do that. But because we have to vindicate the Constitution,” Nadler continued. “We have to show that this kind of behavior — trashing the Constitution, trashing all the norms which guarantee democratic government, aggrandizing power to the presidency and destroying the separation of powers and thereby leading the president to become more and more of a tyrant cannot be tolerated. And it cannot be normalized.”
“We have to make sure the next president or the one after him or her knows there’s a real penalty to be paid. That’s why the impeachment is necessary, even if we cannot get a vote in the Senate, in my opinion,” Nadler said. (RELATED: Impeachment Is Getting Harder For Democrats To Resist, Here’s What Those Close To Trump Are Saying About It)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi delivers remarks during her weekly news conference on Capitol Hill September 12, 2019 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Tom Brenner/Getty Images)
Despite House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s reluctance to push for impeachment, there are currently 126 Democrats who support impeachment or an impeachment inquiry, compared to the 109 Democrats who don’t support impeachment or impeachment inquiry, yet. Pelosi has said she believes Trump is “goading” Democrats to impeach him from office because he thinks it will help him fire up his base.
Many of Pelosi’s Democratic colleagues have continued to push for impeaching Trump, such as Democratic Texas Rep. Al Green, who broke with Pelosi when he vowed to force a vote to impeach Trump in late March. Green, who previously had several bills to impeach Trump overwhelmingly rejected by the House of Representatives, called for a third impeachment vote. Pelosi said impeachment was “just not worth it” in a March interview.
Nadleralso requested a number of documents from the White House on March 4 and sent letters seeking information from people and organizations close to Trump. (RELATED: House Tables Vote To Consider Articles Of Impeachment For Trump)
Nadler sent the requests to 81 groups, people and organizations, searching for constitutional abuses and corruption by Trump. The New York representative said in March the requests for documents are to “begin investigations, to present the case to the American people about obstruction of justice, about corruption and abuse of power.”
Pelosi has still not said she believes Trump should be impeached.