Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Harris would pursue obstruction case
Democratic presidential candidate discusses possible action against Trump if she wins the White House.
WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris said Wednesday that if she wins the White House, her Justice Department “would have no choice” but to pursue an obstruction of justice case against President Donald Trump after he leaves office.
The California senator and some other Democrats in the 2020 race are pushing their party to initiate the impeachment process after special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Mueller has said he was unable to exonerate Trump of obstruction but couldn’t pursue potential charges because of a Justice Department policy that bars the indictment of a sitting president — a policy Harris has said she would ask her Justice Department to reexamine.
“Everyone should be held accountable,” Harris told NPR in an interview broadcast Wednesday. “And the president is not above the law.”
Harris, a former California attorney general who also was San Francisco’s district attorney, later said she would not dictate the outcome of any prospective efforts to charge Trump. “The facts and the evidence will take the process where it leads,” she said.
Suggesting that Trump face prosecution after he leaves office is a fine line for any Democrat after the party has excoriated him for politicizing the Justice Department, as when he threatened during the 2016 campaign to prosecute his rival, Hillary Clinton, once becoming president.
Impeachment remains popular with Democrats’ base voters, but the party’s congressional leaders are more cautious because the Republican-controlled Senate probably doesn’t have the votes to remove Trump from office.
Harris is not alone among 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls in criticizing the Justice Department policy that Mueller cited in declining to look at obstruction charges in his nearly twoyear investigation of Trump. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the first candidate to fully endorse the start of impeachment proceedings after Mueller’s report, pledged last month to end that policy if she’s elected president.
Nearly half of the more than 20 Democratic primary candidates are calling for the start of an impeachment inquiry, Harris and Warren among them. Few contenders, though, are making that stance a centerpiece of their campaigns.
But Harris, who is running in part on the strength of her legal and law enforcement experience, appears to have taken a step farther than her opponents in affirming that a Justice Department in her administration “should” look at charging Trump with obstruction once he no longer is president.
“I do believe that we should believe Bob Mueller when he tells us, essentially, that the only reason an indictment was not returned” was because of the current policy that bars indictment of a president while in office, Harris told NPR. “But I’ve seen prosecution of cases on much less evidence.”
Another Democratic presidential hopeful, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, said in New Hampshire on Wednesday that the Justice Department has a responsibility to look into whether Trump should be charged but that process “should not be under the control of the president.”
Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who’s also in the race, recently said his Justice Department would ensure “accountability and justice” but he did not commit his administration to pursuing a case against Trump.