Author: John Kruzel / Source: PolitiFact
Democrats in Congress are debating how to respond to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report, which cleared the Trump campaign of criminally conspiring with Russia, but also detailed President Donald Trump’s efforts to restrict and even shut down the probe.
After Mueller declined to draw a legal conclusion about whether Trump’s attempts to interfere were unlawful, Attorney General William Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said the president’s conduct was not.
The special counsel’s silence on the obstruction of justice question is now central to lawmakers’ discussion about how to respond.
Some Democrats perceive Mueller’s report as a roadmap for Congress, providing what amounts to a guide for impeachment proceedings. But others say Senate Republicans would likely block Trump’s removal, which could be seen as a political defeat for Democrats.
For now, Democratic leaders have vowed to use their majority power in the House to continue to investigate Trump’s questionable conduct, an interim step that could lead to impeachment.
“If it is what we need to do to honor our responsibility to the Constitution — if that’s the place the facts take us, that’s the place we have to go,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on a Democratic conference call in reference to impeachment, according to NBC News, adding, “We don’t have to go to articles of impeachment to obtain the facts, the presentation of facts.”
For his part, Trump has said he would fight impeachment at the Supreme Court. But the court has affirmed that the Constitution grants that power exclusively to Congress.
The Mueller Report, despite being written by Angry Democrats and Trump Haters, and with unlimited money behind it ($35,000,000), didn’t lay a glove on me. I DID NOTHING WRONG. If the partisan Dems ever tried to Impeach, I would first head to the U.S. Supreme Court. Not only……
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
Here, we’ll take a look at several factors that will shape the impeachment process — or its absence.
Experts we spoke to said Democrats have three options, each of which carries its own mix of advantages and drawbacks.
Perhaps the least severe measure Democrats could take would be to censure Trump. One or both chambers of Congress can issue a censure against a president, which represents a formal rebuke for inappropriate conduct.
Congress since 1800 has introduced resolutions of censure against at least 12 sitting presidents, according to a Congressional Research Service report. It was considered during the tenure of President Bill Clinton as a potential alternative to impeachment. (Liberal activist group MoveOn.org actually got its name from its proposal about Clinton to “censure and move on.”)
“Censuring has the advantage of rebuking a president without removal,” said Ian Ostrander, a political science professor at Michigan State University. “If this option has an upside for the Democrats, it could be that it weakens Trump while retaining him as the man to beat in 2020.”
But censure’s downside may be its blandness — a “slap on the wrist,” as one expert said.
A formal expression of disapproval could still placate the base enough to let the party move onto potentially higher-priority issues as the 2020 election ramps up.
“Censure gives House Democrats a formal expression of disapproval that many of them believe is demanded by their constituents,” said Steven Smith, a political science professor at Washington…
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