Time’s up, Prez
AOC heats up ‘justifiable’ impeach call
Rep. Alexandria OcasioCortez said Sunday that pressure to impeach President Trump was mounting along with evidence to support it, citing Trump saying he would accept dirt on political opponents if it was offered by foreign powers.
“I think every day that passes the pressure to impeach grows, and I think that it’s justifiable,” the freshman lawmaker from New York told host Jonathan Karl on ABC’s “The Week With George Stephanopoulos.”
“I think the evidence continues to come in and I believe that with the president now saying that he is willing to break the law to win reelection … that transcends partisanship … this is now about the rule of law in the United States of America.”
Last Wednesday, Trump said in an Oval Office interview with Stephanopoulos that he would accept information from foreign governments on political opponents. Calling it “oppo research,” Trump said he would not necessarily tell the FBI about it.
Trump’s comments drew intense criticism, coming in the wake of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Significant elements of that probe dealt with interactions between Russians and people in Trump’s inner circle, including his son-in-law Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr. and Paul Manafort, all of whom were senior members of Trump’s 2016 campaign.
On Sunday, Karl pointed to a new NBC News poll showing support for impeachment expanding among Democrats.
“It should not be about polls,” Ocasio-Cortez (DQueens, Bronx) said. “It should not be about elections … this is about the presence and evidence that the president may have committed a crime, in this case more than one.
“I believe that our decision on impeachment should be based in our constitutional responsibilities and duties, and not in elections or polling.”
Still, Ocasio-Cortez acknowledged the significance of the poll. “I think the American people are now recognizing … the depth and the severity of the misconduct coming out of the White House and a demand to protect our institutions and protect the rule of law in the United States,” she said.
She said at the very least an inquiry should be opened into possible misconduct.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has steadily pushed back against impeachment, saying in a Sunday interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that “I don’t think there’s anything more divisive we can do than to impeach a president of the United States.” She has warned that impeachment should not be politically motivated..
Asked about Pelosi’s reluctance to move forward with impeachment, Ocasio-Cortez said, “We come together as a caucus and we have these conversations, as the speaker likes to say, they are family conversations, they are ones that are held in confidence … I’ve said it privately, I’ve said it when we subpoenaed the attorney general … this is about the rule of law” and holding the president and government accountable.
Any vote to impeach would have to pass the House and the Senate. While Democrats control the House, the Senate is controlled by Republicans, and the possibility of a supermajority in the Senate voting to impeach is low. A Washington, D.C., man was charged with trespassing after he refused to leave Rep. Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez’s office building in Queens and tried to barricade himself inside a janitor’s closet, cops said Sunday.
Douala Hashi, 31, entered the Jackson Heights building on 37th Ave. near 74th St. a little before 5 p.m. Saturday and ran up to the third floor. When he wouldn’t get out, building security officers called police.
When cops arrived on the third floor, Hashi grabbed a fire extinguisher and sprayed it at the officers. He then ran into a janitor’s closet with a broken bottle but the officers were able to coax him out, police said.
Hashi was charged with menacing, criminal mischief and trespassing. He was taken to Elmhurst Hospital Center for a psychiatric evaluation. His arraignment in Queens Criminal Court was pending.
The NYPD says the man never broke into OcasioCortez’s actual office, which opened in March. Authorities do not believe he had any connection to the congresswoman, who was not in the office at the time of the incident.
“It appears to have been a coincidence that this happened in our building,” Corbin Trent, a spokesman for Ocasio-Cortez, told WNBC. “We are glad that it was resolved peacefully.”