Sunday on MSNBC’s “Kasie DC,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), a candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, spoke on the impeachment efforts underway in the House of Representatives.
The New Jersey Democrat chastised President Donald Trump for not cooperating with the House and praise House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for being a “brilliant strategist and leader” on the subject.
Partial transcript as follows:
MOHYELDIN: All right. So, Senator, given what you’ve seen, have your Democratic colleagues, do you think made their case or are there more pieces to put together on the impeachment front?
BOOKER: Well, clearly, there is. I mean, this is the problem with this whole investigation, is that you have a president that’s refusing to submit himself to the checks and balances of Congress, to the oversight of Congress. He’s refusing to allow key witnesses from Mulvaney to Giuliani, who could tell the full truth to us, could stand before the American people. If they feel that they have a good defense, they could put it forward.
So, it’s unfortunate that we are seeing such damning evidence to come through by a lot of key players and key pieces of evidence are being withheld by a president who doesn’t want to subject himself to the checks and balances of the United States Constitution and government.
MOHYELDIN: So, would you tell your Democratic colleagues in the House to go to the courts, to make these legal fights to get Mick Mulvaney, to get Mike Pompeo, to get John Bolton, to get in front of those committee hearings and testify, or do you think they need to hand this over now to the Senate for both the Senate to consider as well as the American public?
BOOKER: Well, look, first of all, Nancy Pelosi has been a brilliant strategist and leader on this, and I know that they are giving thought to all the strategies. But clearly, you know, I think this is one of those moments in America where the future is going to look back on us and say, what did we do when the first president in modern era really was trashing our constitutional ideals by not subjecting himself to oversight, by saying he’s above the law?
And so, I do think court fights are worthy at this point and I think the more truth the American public knows and probably the reason they’re not allowing documents and people to come forward is that the more the public knows, the more damning it is to the administration.
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