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 Social Security Administration’s acting commissioner has stepped down from her role at the agency over Department of Government Efficiency requests.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum says her government is not ruling out filing a civil lawsuit against Google if it maintains its stance of calling the stretch of sea between northeastern Mexico and the southeastern United States the “Gulf of America.” Sheinbaum, in her morning press conference on Thursday, said the president’s decree to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico is restricted to the “continental shelf of the United States” because Mexico still controls much of the body of water. “We have sovereignty over our continental shelf,” she said.
U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum “will not go unanswered,” European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen vowed on Tuesday, adding that they will trigger toug
President Donald Trump is hitting foreign steel and aluminum with a 25% tax. If that sounds familiar, it’s because he did pretty much the same thing during
President Donald Trump has ordered the U.S. to stop minting pennies. His surprise announcement comes after decades of unsuccessful efforts to phase out the 1-cent coin. Advocates for ditching the penny cite its high production cost and limited utility. Fans of the penny cite its usefulness in charity drives and relative bargain in production costs compared with the nickel. Here's a look at some question surrounding Trump's order.
The Trump administration has ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop nearly all its work, effectively shutting down the agency that was created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage-lending scandal. Russell Vought is the newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought directed the CFPB in a Saturday night email to stop work on proposed rules, to suspend the effective dates on any rules that were finalized but not yet effective, and to stop investigative work and not begin any new investigations. The agency has been a target of conservatives since President Barack Obama created it following the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
Brian Bennett, Senior White House correspondent at TIME, discusses Musk's relationship to Donald Trump and how he has such access in the federal government.
