On Monday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The Beat,” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) said the impeachment against President Donald Trump should be focused on his dealings with Ukraine.
Omar compared to law enforcement prosecuting crime boss Al Capone on tax evasion.
Melber asked, “You have previously advocated for impeaching this president on other grounds before the Ukraine bribery plot was exposed. What is your current thinking on how narrow or broad to advance impeachment?”
Omar said, “I’ve said for a really long time that it wasn’t going to be if the president was getting impeached, it was going to be when. I believed that there were multiple reasons for us to move impeachment on this president. Right now, I think it is really important for us to have it be narrowed, because this is a very concise case, regardless of the shenanigans that the Republicans are engaged in at the moment. The public can clearly understand where the violations are and can follow this case.”
Melber said, “To make sure I’m hearing you right on that, you would say on, say, the bigotry that you discussed before, the Mueller stuff, you’d say leave that out?”
Omar said, “I think there are other opportunities, but right now, we have a clear case, and I believe that we should follow this one. You know, I’ve used examples where you’ve had mob bosses who have committed atrocity after atrocity, and have violated our criminal codes of conduct, and we got them on one narrow case. But they get to serve time. And what’s important right now is that for this particular president that we know has many cases where we can impeach him on, that we focus on the one what the public is paying attention to and impeach him on that.”
Melber said, “Congresswoman, it sounds like you are artfully making a comparison on the legal precedent to this president and Al Capone?”
Omar said, “Yes.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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