Fact Check: Warren Falsely Claims Trump Broke the Law ‘Again and Again and Again’

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) on Wednesday evening said she will try to persuade Republicans in the Senate to convict President Trump if the impeachment inquiry moves to a trial in the Senate.

Warren falsely claimed the president broke the law “again and again and again,” citing the Mueller report that found no evidence of collusion or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, a moderator of Wednesday’s Democrat debate, kicked off the evening by asking Warren if she will attempt to convince her Republican colleagues in the Senate to convict Trump.

“Of course I will,” Warren stated. “The obvious answer is to say first, read the Mueller report, all 442 pages of it. That shows you how the president tried to obstruct justice,” she said, contending that Trump felt free to break the law “again and again and again, and that’s what’s happened with Ukraine.”

“We have to have to establish the principle no one is above the law. We have a constitutional responsibility and we need to meet it,” she said.

However, Warren’s claim that the Mueller report showed clear obstruction of justice is false, as former Special Counsel Robert Mueller did not make a determination. Attorney General William Barr ultimately concluded that “the evidence developed by the Special Counsel is not sufficient to establish that the president committed an obstruction of justice offense.”

Mueller told lawmakers over the summer:

I want to add one correction to my testimony this morning. I wanted to go back to one thing that was said this morning by Mr. [Ted Lieu (D-CA] — who said, and I quote, ‘You didn’t charge the president because of the [Office of Legal Counsel (OLC)] opinion.’ That is not the correct way to say it.

“As we say in the report and as I said in the opening, we did not reach a determination as to whether the president committed a crime,” he added.

Additionally, Warren’s claim that the president broke the law “again and again and again” –  particularly in regard to Ukraine – is false. On Wednesday, Ambassador Gordon Sondland testified before the House Intelligence Committee and stated that Trump told him, “I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo.”

Sondland said:

I finally called the president… I believe I just asked him an open-ended question, Mr. Chairman. What do you want from Ukraine? I keep hearing all these different ideas and theories and this and that. What do you want?

It was a very short abrupt conversation, he was not in a good mood, and he just said, ‘I want nothing. I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo. Tell Zelensky to do the right thing,’ something to that effect.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) essentially dismantled the basis for the Democrats’ entire impeachment inquiry on Wednesday, demonstrating that, despite Sondland’s presumptions that a phone call, meeting, and aid were contingent on an announcement of an investigation into the 2016 elections and Burisma, the country received all three without any such pledge.

“I mean, you got all three of them wrong. They get the call, they get the meeting, they get the money. It’s not 2+2. It’s 0-3.  I mean I’ve never seen anything like this,” Jordan said.

“And you told Mr. Castor that the president never told you that the announcement had to happen to get anything. In fact. He didn’t just not tell you that, he explicitly said the opposite,” he added.