One of the prominent topics during tonight's series of town halls on CNN: whether or not President Donald Trump should be impeached because of the Russia probe. During her one hour town hall Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) explained why she thought Trump's offenses were impeachable. The most interesting aspect of her answer though, was her saying a vote should come forward so the American people know where each member of Congress stands on the issue.
"If any other person in this country had done what's documented in the Mueller report, they would be arrested and put in jail. Obstruction of justice is a serious crime in this country," Warren explained. "But Mueller believed, because of the directions from Donald Trump's Justice Department, that he could not bring a criminal indictment against a sitting president. I think he's wrong on that but that's what he believed."
Fact: Robert Mueller was a Special Counsel, not an Independent Counsel like Ken Starr was. The difference matters. Mueller reports to the Department of Justice, not Congress. Starr reported to Congress when he was an Independent Counsel. This wasn't the DOJ stringing along the investigation. This is literally how Congress set up the investigations after the Starr investigation.
Fact: A sitting president cannot be indicted, despite what liberals want you to believe.
Fact: Mueller went to law school. Warren did not. We'll take Mueller's legal opinion any day over Warren's.
"So he serves the whole thing up to the United States Congress and says, in effect, that if that's going to be any accountability, that accountability has to come from the Congress. And the tool that we are given for that accountability is the impeachment process," Warren said. "This is not about politics. This is about principle. This is about what kind of democracy we have."
Fact: We are not a democracy. We're a republic. The majority rules with the protection of the minority. The difference matters.
"In a dictatorship, everything revolves around protecting the one person at the center but not in our democracy and not under out Constitution," Warren explained. "We have a system of checks and balances and we have to proceed here, in a way, understanding our place in history, that not only protects democracy now but protects democracy when the next president comes in and the next president and the president after that."
What's shocking is Warren believes the Russia investigation is similar to a dictatorship.
Fact: If America was a dictatorship, she wouldn't be in office.
Fact: If America was a dictatorship, whether or not collusion took place would not matter.
Fact: If America was a dictatorship, an investigation wouldn't even have taken place.
To equate the Mueller probe and how President Trump dealt with the investigation is nothing but a slap in the face. Yes, we have checks and balances. But no one was out to protect Trump. If they were, why would Republicans – and President Trump himself – want the Mueller report to be made public? Why some of the most vocal calls for the report to be made public come from Republicans?
If anyone was protecting Trump, an investigation would have never taken place and no Republicans, or even the president, would want the findings to be out in the open.
The comments are disgusting. Just because you don't like Trump doesn't mean he's a dictator. If he was, Congress wouldn't exist, legislation wouldn't exist and voting rights wouldn't exist.
.@ewarren on her conclusions after actually reading the Mueller report and why she thinks the House should begin impeachment proceedings(the full clip explains the report more) #WarrenTownHall #CNNTownHall pic.twitter.com/y01JhuHEKw
— Brett Banditelli (@banditelli) April 23, 2019
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