In a Friday interview with Bloomberg Television, fired FBI Director James Comey said Congress could impeach President Donald Trump based on special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings on now-debunked collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia.
A transcript is as follows:
MATTHEW MILLER: A thing you said when you were considering whether or not you would prosecute Martha Stewart was that “people cannot obstruct justice no matter who they are. Is the president exempt from that? The Mueller report seemed to say he at least couldn’t be prosecuted for it.
JAMES COMEY: No, what Director Mueller said in his report is the president, while in office, can’t be charged with a crime, including obstruction of justice. He put together the evidence, as he said, so a future prosecutor after he leaves office could take a look at it. And so that the major mechanism in the U.S. Constitution, Congress’s impeachment authority, could be given life by the facts he gathered.
MILLER: Do you think he could be impeached with that evidence?
COMEY: I think he could.
MILLER: Do you think he should be impeached with that evidence?
COMEY: I think he could be based on the evidence that’s gathered. I don’t know what Congress will do. I kind of hope that he isn’t impeached because I think that would let the American people off the hook. The American people need to vote their values next year and if he was impeached and convicted and removed from office that way, whole lot of his supporters would think some sort of coup went on. We need an exercise in American democracy to show the world and ourselves that these are our values and this guy doesn’t reflect them.