US President Donald Trump. PHOTO | AFP
WASHINGTON
More
than half of House Democrats support launching impeachment proceedings
against US President Donald Trump, media tallies showed Friday, a
milestone that progressives hope will move Speaker Nancy Pelosi off of
her resistance to opening an inquiry.
Of
the 235 voting Democrats, 118 have publicly stated their support for
beginning the procedures aimed at removing Trump from office, with the
symbolic threshold being crossed when congressman Ted Deutch of Florida
came out in favour on Thursday.
2016 ELECTION
Momentum
has steadily built in the days since former special counsel Robert
Mueller testified before Congress about his two-year investigation of
Russian election interference and potential obstruction of justice by
Trump.
Deutch became the 23rd
Democratic lawmaker to support the proceedings since Mueller went before
Congress and, in Deutch's words, "confirmed the damning conclusions of
his report."
The Mueller report details how Russia
interfered in "sweeping and systematic fashion" in Trump's favour during
the 2016 US presidential election campaign.
It sets out how the Trump campaign welcomed that help and repeatedly lied about it.
Democrats argue that Mueller also provided evidence for 10 instances of potential obstruction of justice by the president.
Surpassing
the 50 percent threshold could be key because Pelosi has repeatedly
stated her opposition to impeachment in part because the bulk of her
caucus remained against launching proceedings.
Instead she prefers letting the several ongoing House investigations of Trump and his administration take their course.
In
June, when Pelosi was asked whether she would support an impeachment
inquiry if a majority of Democrats backed it, she declined to answer a
hypothetical.
"It's not even close in our caucus," Pelosi said, while adding that impeachment was "not off the table."
Pelosi
has regularly noted that impeaching Trump would almost certainly lead
to acquittal in the Senate, where Republicans hold a majority, and allow
Trump to claim vindication and fire up his core supporters as he seeks
re-election.
Some House Democrats
argue that it is their constitutional duty to take action when they see
evidence of presidential wrongdoing, regardless of the political
ramifications.
Meanwhile congressman
Will Hurd, the only African-American Republican in the House and the
only Republican representing a district on the US-Mexico border,
announced he will not seek re-election in 2020.
Hurd
joins five other Republicans, several of them in swing districts, who
announced their retirements in the last two weeks, a blow to party
efforts to reclaim the House majority.
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