Michigan Rep. Justin Amash became the first Republican to call for President Donald Trump’s impeachment Saturday.
Amash said on Twitter that after reading the Mueller report, he concluded that Trump “has engaged in impeachable conduct” and that Attorney General Bill Barr “deliberate misrepresented Mueller’s report.”
Amash wrote that Barr intentionally misled the public about Mueller’s conclusions and noted that the report “reveals that President Trump engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that meet the threshold for impeachment.”
“In fact, Mueller’s report identifies multiple examples of conduct satisfying all the elements of obstruction of justice, and undoubtedly any person who is not the president of the United States would be indicted based on such evidence,” he continued.
“Impeachment, which is a special form of indictment, does not even require probable cause that a crime (e.g., obstruction of justice) has been committed; it simply requires a finding that an official has engaged in careless, abusive, corrupt, or otherwise dishonorable conduct,” he wrote.
“America’s institutions depend on officials to uphold both the rules and spirit of our constitutional system even when to do so is personally inconvenient or yields a politically unfavorable outcome. Our Constitution is brilliant and awesome; it deserves a government to match it.”
Trump lashes out at Amash:
Trump, who has over 60 million followers, gave Amash, who has over 200,000 followers, a massive boost when he blared his impeachment call on his Twitter feed.
“Never a fan of @justinamash, a total lightweight who opposes me and some of our great Republican ideas and policies just for the sake of getting his name out there through controversy,” Trump wrote. “If he actually read the biased Mueller Report, “composed” by 18 Angry Dems who hated Trump, he would see that it was nevertheless strong on NO COLLUSION and, ultimately, NO OBSTRUCTION...Anyway, how do you Obstruct when there is no crime and, in fact, the crimes were committed by the other side? Justin is a loser who sadly plays right into our opponents hands!”
George Conway, a lawyer who was on Trump’s shortlist for a top Justice Department post and is the husband of Trump aide Kellyanne Conway, fact-checked Trump’s tweet “lie by lie.” Hundreds of former federal prosecutors have signed a letter confirming that anyone else would have been indicted based on the charges in the Mueller report alone.
Amash draws primary challenger:
Shortly after Amash’s call, the Michigan congressman drew a primary challenger.
State Rep. Jim Lower said that he was planning to run before the tweet but fast-tracked his announcement after Amash’s impeachment call, The Detroit Free Press reports.
"Congressman Justin Amash tweets yesterday calling for President Trump’s impeachment show how out of touch he is with the truth and how out of touch he is with people he represents," Lower said. "He must be replaced and I am going to do it."
