Former Secretary of State and failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton backed opening impeachment proceedings into President Donald Trump, declaring it is “exactly what should be done.”
In a Monday appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the CBS funnyman began by asking Clinton whether Congress should initiate an impeachment inquiry against Trump over a phone call he made to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Last Tuesday, Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced that she would initiate impeachment proceedings on the grounds that Trump “abused his power by pushing Ukraine to investigate his political rival, Joe Biden.”
During the call, Trump asked his Ukranian counterpart to “look into” Biden’s alleged financial interests in the country when he was vice president.
“We learned about the Trump-Ukraine call, the private server — is it time to, dare I say, lock him up?” Colbert asked Clinton, who appeared alongside her daughter Chelsea. “What do you make of it?”
“We have started an impeachment inquiry, which will look at the evidence, and I think that’s exactly what should be done,” Clinton responded. “We’ve known for a long time that he was a corrupt businessman who cheated people, and we’ve known that he and his campaign asked for aid from Russia, we’ve known that.”
“But to see him in the office of the president, putting his own personal and political interests ahead of the national security of our country, just pierced through whatever confusion or denial people had,” she continued.
Clinton also criticized her successor as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo amid reports that he had listened in to Trump’s conversation with Zelensky. “How many times when you were secretary of state did you have to say to Obama, ‘You can’t extort foreign countries to get dirt on your political enemies?’” Colbert asked.
“Yeah, that never happened,” she responded. “The Secretary of State’s job is to make sure he knows, number one, what the president is going to say on those calls. But because you’ve got a president who doesn’t listen to anybody and doesn’t follow instructions whatsoever. I’m not sure they haven’t just given up on trying to give him any sort of preparation.”
The 71-year-old former First Lady also took aim at Donald Trump’s lawyer and former Mayor of New York Rudy Guiliani, who reportedly inquired with Ukranian officials about Biden’s and his son Hunter’s dealings with Ukraine on behalf of the State Department.
“Presidents often use — as do secretaries of state — they might use an envoy or a special adviser to deliver a message,” Clinton contended. “But again, it is supposed to be carefully thought through. And from what we’ve seen on television, carefully thinking through is not one of Rudy’s strong points.”
Clinton is currently doing a media tour to promote her new book, The Book of Gutsy Women, and hasn’t minced her words with regard to her former Republican opponent. In a CBS interview on Sunday, she argued that despite his convincing electoral college victory, Trump “knows he’s an illegitimate president” and her defeat felt like losing to a “corrupt human tornado.”
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