With President Donald Trump facing an impeachment inquiry in the U.S. House of Representatives, journalists have been seeking the insights of those who were involved in the United States’ last two presidential impeachments: President Richard Nixon in 1973/1974 and President Bill Clinton in the last 1990s. Former Rep. Bob Inglis, a South Carolina Republican, discussed his involvement with Clinton’s impeachment during a CNN appearance this week — and he stressed that Clinton/Trump comparisons are misleading because Trump’s actions are much worse.
“The matters that is we impeached Bill Clinton for were really quite less serious than these matters,” Inglis told CNN. “These matters go right to the heart of the functioning of our government with the dealing of the president in foreign policy, and allegedly seeking political dirt on an enemy — a domestic political enemy — (and) using the levers of our government to achieve that objective. That’s a very different scenario — much more serious — than Bill Clinton’s marital infidelity.”
When Inglis was asked what he has to say to fellow Republicans who are defending Trump vigorously, the former congressman responded, “I would say to them that if you are going to keep a republic, you’ve got to keep some principles — and surely, the principle is to fairness and the rule of law. I just ask my Republican friends: if Barack Obama had done any of these things, would we have impeached him? And the answer is pretty clearly yes. In fact, we would have impeached him and removed him from office very quickly if he had done any of these things.”
View the complete November 26 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.
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