On Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Representative Brad Sherman (D-CA) defended and explained the articles of impeachment that he, with the co-sponsorship of Representative Al Green (D-TX) introduced against President Trump.
Sherman began by saying he didn’t file the articles in response to Donald Trump Jr.’s emails, but they “further bolster it.”
Sherman said Trump is guilty of “Obstruction of justice, as defined by 1512 (b)(3) of the criminal law of the United States, in two respects. Most simply, he threatened Comey, in order to get Comey to curtail the investigation of Flynn. That’s obstruction of justice, and it lines up perfectly with the code section and with the cases that have defined it. Secondly, he fired Comey, and then said that his reason, or that the effect, was to curtail or thwart the investigation to the general Russia matter. And of course, in the last couple of days, we’ve learned how important that Russia matter was.”
He added that it didn’t matter whether Trump actually hindered the investigation because “Ineffective obstruction of justice is a crime. If you threaten an FBI officer and say, you better not go forward or I’m going to do this or that, and the FBI officer just laughs it off, that’s still obstruction of justice.”
Sherman continued that Trump “said you’d like to keep your job, and I’m telling you, that I want you to drop this investigation.”
He added that Trump didn’t explicitly tie dropping the investigation to Comey keeping his job, but that Trump “knew that Comey wanted to keep his job. Comey knew that he could be fired at any time, and he told Comey to drop the investigation, or to curtail it, or to slow-walk it.” Sherman further stated that if you combine what Trump said on one occasion with what he said on another occasion, it comes out to Trump telling Comey that Comey would like to keep his job and Trump wanted Comey to drop the investigation.
Sherman also said Trump “didn’t even need to have the first conversation. When, for — in order to protect a friend, to protect himself, he instructs the FBI director to drop or curtail an investigation of a close associate like Michael Flynn, that is obstruction of justice.”
Sherman further said that he hopes the articles of impeachment cause an “intervention” inside the White House that causes the president to stop acting incompetently and impulsively.
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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