Former federal prosecutor Paul Butler said on Saturday that it is now clear that the president of the United States is a criminal. The only remedy, he said, is impeachment.
“The president, Donald Trump, is a criminal,” Butler said. “If he were not a president of the United States, he would be under federal criminal indictment today.”
Since Trump’s powerful position is protecting him from a federal criminal indictment, the ex-federal prosecutor said Congress must follow legal precedent and impeach the president, like they did when Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton were in the White House.
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Paul Butler says Trump would be under federal criminal indictment if he wasn’t president. #ctl #p2 pic.twitter.com/czgM6QMizg
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) December 8, 2018
Butler said:
The president, Donald Trump, is a criminal. If he were not president of the United States, he would be under federal criminal indictment today. The constitutional remedy is impeachment when someone — when a president has committed high crimes and misdemeanors. And as we’ve heard, when the Department of Justice has developed evidence against other presidents that they have been implicated in crimes, they have been impeached. So when that evidence was developed against Richard Nixon, he was impeached. When that evidence was developed against Bill Clinton, he was impeached. Based on the legal precedent, President Trump should be impeached.
Impeachment is the only optionÂ
Most Democrats have been reluctant to move forward with impeachment proceedings, fearing that voters will punish them for overreaching just as they did when Republicans went after Bill Clinton in the 1990s.
But we are quickly reaching a moment when it would and should be politically perilous for lawmakers who fail to act, particularly as it becomes increasingly clear that Donald Trump committed crimes to win the presidency.
If congressional Republicans have any shred of honor left – and it’s unclear if they do – then they will join the growing number of Democrats who are declaring that nobody, not even the president, is above the law.
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Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
