Failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton argued Wednesday in an op-ed that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report “documents a serious crime against the American people.”
“Our election was corrupted, our democracy assaulted, our sovereignty and security violated. This is the definitive conclusion of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report. It documents a serious crime against the American people,” she wrote.
Clinton’s op-ed, published in the Washington Post, comes during a raging debate among Democrats on whether to try to impeach President Trump based on Mueller’s report, which recommended no charges related to Russian collusion or obstruction.
Clinton said the debate about “how to hold President Trump accountable for obstructing the investigation and possibly breaking the law” has been reduced to a “false choice” — “immediate impeachment or nothing.”
She appealed to Democrats and Republicans to use Mueller’s report as a “road map.”
“What our country needs now is clear-eyed patriotism, not reflexive partisanship. Whether they like it or not, Republicans in Congress share the constitutional responsibility to protect the country. Mueller’s report leaves many unanswered questions — in part because of Attorney General William P. Barr’s redactions and obfuscations. But it is a road map,” he said.
“It’s up to members of both parties to see where that road map leads — to the eventual filing of articles of impeachment, or not. Either way, the nation’s interests will be best served by putting party and political considerations aside and being deliberate, fair and fearless,” she wrote.
She recommended that Congress hold “substantive hearings” that “build” on Mueller’s report and “fills in its gaps,” and not “jump straight to an up-or-down vote on impeachment.” She said the Republican-led House rushed to judgment in 1998, presumably against her husband, although she did not specify. “That was a mistake then and would be a mistake now.”
She said, “Watergate offers a better precedent.” Repeating arguments made by her former advisers and Democrat strategists, she recommended televised hearings would add to the “factual record” and help the “public understand the facts.”
She recommended that if the House proceeds to an impeachment inquiry, it find someone “distinguished and principled” as John Doar, the former Justice Department official who led the formal impeachment inquiry into former President Richard Nixon.
She also called for a 9/11-style commission into future Russian interference in U.S. elections. But she also warned Democrats to “stay focused” on the “sensible agenda that voters demanded in the midterms.”
“For today’s Democrats, it’s not only possible to move forward on multiple fronts at the same time, it’s essential,” she said.
She asserted that unless Trump is “held accountable,” he would “show even more disregard” for the law and “likely redouble his efforts to advance Putin’s agenda.”
She also called on Americans to “prove the wisdom of our Constitution, the resilience of our democracy and the strength of our nation.”
Clinton did not acknowledge in the op-ed that it was her campaign that funded the “pee dossier” used to investigate President Trump’s campaign, and she claimed after the election that Trump won in part because of help from Russia.