Congressman Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) is raising questions after former special counsel Robert Mueller's testimony this week about his report on Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Lieu says Mueller appeared to give conflicting answers Wednesday about the ability to indict a sitting president, indicating in the first hearing that it could not be done, then rolling that back in the second hearing of the day.
"I found that very odd," Lieu told Cheddar on Friday. "He understood that what he said to me — that he refused to backtrack to the Republican member who followed me — was that Donald Trump committed the crime of obstruction of justice."
Lieu says he thinks Mueller walked back his comments because he didn't want to appear to say he believed the president was guilty of a crime.
Lieu's comments come amid growing pressure from some Democrats to begin an impeachment inquiry, a move that Speaker Nancy Pelosi still says is premature. But Lieu said that support is growing, pointing to five more members of his party who have come to support impeachment proceedings since Mueller's testimony.
"You can't watch these hearings and not conclude three things: that the Russians systematically attacked us in 2016 in our elections in a sweeping manner. Second, that the Trump campaign embraced this attack, used information from it, gave Russians internal polling, and knew it was going to help Donald Trump. And then third, the president committed multiple acts of obstruction of justice, which are felonies, to try to stop the investigation into the Russians."
But other representatives have said the only way Democrats will remove Trump is at the ballot box.
"We do need to be realistic, and that is, the only way he's leaving office, at least at this point, is by being voted out," said Rep. Adam Schiff on Thursday.
Lieu isn't deterred. "When the Nixon impeachment process started, 19 percent of the American people supported it. After a few months of hearings the American people decided Nixon was a crook, and then he eventually resigned," said the representative.
He also called Attorney General William Barr's announcement that he will revitalize federal capital punishment an effort by the Trump administration to "distract" from a bad week for the president.
The Biden administration on Tuesday quietly launched its website for Americans to request free at-home COVID-19 tests, a day before the site was scheduled to officially launch.
Just 27% of voters aged 18-29 approve of the job Biden is doing as president, according to a survey from The Economist and YouGov late last year. Santiago Mayer, executive director of Voters of Tomorrow, joins Cheddar Politics to discuss why President Biden is losing support among young voters.
Jesse Lehrich, co-founder of Accountable Tech, joins Cheddar News to discuss it being one year since Trump was exiled from social media and the former President's new platform 'Truth Social.'
Cliff Albright, co-founder of the group Black Voters Matter, joins Cheddar Politics to discuss why he boycotted President Biden's voting rights speech this week, and the push from Senate Democrats to debate and vote on the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
Senator Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) has teamed up with fellow Democratic senator and former astronaut Mark Kelly to introduce the Ban Congressional Stock Trading Act, a bill to essentially end stock trading by sitting lawmakers. From the other side of the aisle, Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) introduced his own legislation to enact something similar. The dueling bills come at a time when it's popular to constrain members of Congress from owning and trading stocks. Karl Evers-Hillstrom, a business and lobbying reporter at The Hill, spoke to Cheddar about the significance of the bills, and what they could mean for lawmakers, their families, and staffers moving forward.
A second Starbucks location in the U.S. has officially voted to unionize. On Monday, the National Labor Relations Board announced workers at the Starbucks store located in the Buffalo, NY suburb of Cheektowaga voted 15-9 in favor of being represented by Workers United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union. The New York Times reports votes were tallied in December but remained inconclusive as the union challenged the ballots of several employees it said did not work at the store. A Starbucks spokesperson has said that it may appeal the labor board's decision, which comes as several other Starbucks stores across the country are also pushing to form a union. Danka Dragic, shift supervisor for the second Starbucks store in the country to unionize, joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Earlier today, Minnesota Republican Representative, Tom Emmer, introduced a bill that would prevent the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency directly to American consumers. According to the Congressman from Minnesota, requiring Americans to open a fed account to access a digital currency, would "put the Fed on insidious path akin to China's digital authoritarianism." Rep. Tom Emmer joined Cheddar's None of The Above to discuss more.
Sixteen of the country's most prestigious universities have been hit with a lawsuit claiming those schools illegally conspired to eliminate competitive financial aid offers for students. Just some of the schools mentioned include Yale, Brown, Columbia, UPenn, and Cornell. Author of "Who Gets In and Why" and Professor of practice at Arizona State University, Jeff Selingo, joined Cheddar to discuss more.
