Last updated on April 4th, 2019 at 11:44 am
Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu said on Tuesday that the Mueller report doesn’t necessarily have to show conclusive evidence of a crime to warrant Trump‘s removal from office.
During an interview with MSNBC‘s Chris Matthews, Lieu said that there is a whole host of behavior that could be considered unethical, even if it doesn’t technically violate a federal statute.
The Democratic lawmaker pointed to the behavior of members of Trump‘s cabinet, like Scott Pruitt and Ryan Zinke, who were forced to resign amid allegations of misconduct.
Lieu said these members of the Trump administration were “forced to resign not because they necessarily violated any federal laws, but because they engaged in misconduct such as conflicts of interest, abuse of power.”
In other words, if the Mueller report shows similar levels of misconduct on the part of Trump – and there is a good chance it will – then it could lead to an outcry among members of Congress and the American people for Trump to step down or be removed from office.
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Lieu said:
I give him an F, and the whole conversation with Jared Kushner just highlights why we need the entire Mueller report … There is a whole range of conduct that may not rise to the level of a federal offense, but could constitute misconduct. For example, former Trump officials Scott Pruitt, Ryan Zinke, David Shulkin, Tom Price and many others were forced to resign not because they necessarily violated any federal laws, but because they engaged in misconduct such as conflicts of interest, abuse of power. We want to know if people like Jared Kushner or others engaged in that kind of conduct, as well as the president.
In an interview over the weekend, Trump‘s acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney made the flimsy argument that as long as you don’t commit an actual crime, it doesn’t matter how unethical your behavior is.
But the American people deserve better than that. Public servants should be held to a higher standard than that.
Just because one set of investigations can’t connect enough dots to charge the president of the United States with a crime, it doesn’t mean he should be able to get away with unprecedented unethical misconduct. The same applies to his son-in-law Jared Kushner and others in this White House.
Donald Trump is trying to normalize unethical behavior by claiming it’s okay so long as he doesn’t get implicated in a crime. Congress and the American people must reject that argument.
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