Hirono: Because You Can’t Indict or Even Charge a Sitting President, You Have to Use Impeachment

Wednesday on MSNBC’s “The Last Word,” Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) insisted the correct course of action in response to Department of Justice special counsel Robert Mueller’s statement earlier in the day was to take up the impeachment of President Donald Trump.

Hirono argued that given Mueller said he could not indict or charge Trump, it was up to the House of Representatives to go forward with impeachment.

Partial transcript as follows:

O’DONNELL: so you interpreted that part about other constitutional processes which is just another phrase for impeachment. You interpreted that to be basically Robert Mueller handing it to the House Judiciary Committee?

HIRONO: I think a lot of us conclude that, because if you can’t indict or even charge a sitting president, how are you going to hold the president accountable? You have it use these other processes of which impeachment starting an impeachment inquiry is one.

O’DONNELL: There’s also a striking point in Robert Mueller’s statement where he says when, when someone obstructs an investigation. He doesn’t say if someone obstructs an investigation. We showed that video earlier in this hour.

And he could have left it as a the hypothetical, but he made it as a statement of something that actually has occurred in his work.

HIRONO: I think that he certainly contemplates that someone else, i.e., Congress, the U.S. House to start, would look at his report as he kept referring to the report speaking for itself. There’s a lot of as far as I’m concerned, evidence that should lead to at least an open of an impeachment inquiry.

But, again, Lawrence, I cite these are not normal times. Under normal times as 800 former prosecutors have said, they would look at the evidence in the Mueller report and conclude that this president obstructed justice. These are not normal times. And that is why is an impeachment in inquiry that brings a lot more what I would call ammunition to the table would be what I’d like to see happen.

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