Two House Democrats joined a coalition of liberal advocacy groups on Thursday to deliver a petition with more than 10 million signatures urging Congress to begin impeachment proceedings against President Trump.
Reps. Al Green (Texas) and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), the most vocal advocates for impeachment among House Democrats, joined with groups including Need to Impeach, Free Speech For People, CREDO, MoveOn, Democracy for America, Women’s March, Courage Campaign and By the People in a rally in front of the Capitol to highlight the petition.
“I always tell people: ‘This is your House, you tell us what to do.’ This is us telling this House what to do,” Tlaib said at Thursday’s rally.{mosads}
Tlaib introduced a resolution in late March that calls on the Judiciary Committee to investigate whether the House should impeach Trump. It currently has seven co-sponsors, most of whom signed on after the release of a partially redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.
Tlaib drew attention on her first day as a member of Congress at the beginning of this year when she told a crowd “We’re going to impeach the mother—-er,” in reference to Trump.
Green, meanwhile, forced two floor votes on impeachment in 2017 and 2018 while Republicans controlled the House and has threatened for months to force a third vote.
Green dismissed the argument from House Democratic leaders who have questioned the efficacy of the House impeaching Trump when the GOP-controlled Senate would protect the president.
“We must impeach. Let the Senate do what they may. We have to do what we must,” Green said.
“Each day that we wait is a day we waited too long. I say we should start impeachment immediately, if not sooner,” he added.
The rally came after the House Judiciary Committee voted on Wednesday to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress for not complying with requests for documents related to the Mueller report.
Democratic leaders say it’s too soon to pursue impeachment and want to move forward with their investigations, despite a blanket refusal from the Trump administration to cooperate with those probes.
“The president is almost self-impeaching because he is, every day, demonstrating more obstruction of justice and disrespect for Congress’s legitimate role to subpoena,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said at a press conference on Thursday. “This is very methodical, it’s very Constitution based, it’s very law based, it’s very factually based. It’s not about pressure, it’s about patriotism.”
Pelosi insisted that rushing to impeachment isn’t the only option for Democrats seeking to hold Trump accountable.
“Sometimes people act as though it’s impeach or nothing. No, it’s not that. It’s a path that is producing results and gathering information, and some of that information is that this administration wants to have a constitutional crisis because they do not respect the oath of office that they take to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” Pelosi said.
But lawmakers like Green and Tlaib, as well as liberal advocacy groups, are agitating for impeachment now.
“The Mueller report is a road map for impeachment, and the longer Congress waits to act, and the more Republicans ignore Trump’s abuses of power, more people will be hurt by Trump’s vicious attacks on our communities and lose faith in our system of checks and balances. The time to act is now,” a Facebook event advisory for Thursday’s rally states.
In addition to Thursday’s rally, a billboard truck will circle around the Capitol for three days to announce the petition.