Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is angry at what she sees as lawless behavior from Donald Trump, but apparently she’s even more furious that Democrats are refusing to impeach him for it.
The Bronx congresswoman is part of an increasingly vocal group of Democrats calling for Trump to be impeached, initially for the obstruction of justice outlined in Robert Mueller’s Russia report, but now also for Trump’s reported attempts to strong-arm the Ukrainian government into digging up dirt on potential 2020 opponent Joe Biden. Ocasio-Cortez has called for Trump’s impeachment, and late on Saturday, she took to Twitter to call out Democrats for letting him slide.
“At this point, the bigger national scandal isn’t the president’s lawbreaking behavior – it is the Democratic Party’s refusal to impeach him for it,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.
She is not the only one imploring Democrats to take action against Trump. Massachusetts Senator and 2020 hopeful Elizabeth Warren has also called out Democrats in Congress for failing to start impeachment proceedings after the reports of Trump pressuring the Ukrainian president into investigating the business dealings of Joe Biden’s son.
Warren claimed that Democrats have emboldened Trump to continue seeking foreign help in winning presidential elections.
“After the Mueller report, Congress had a duty to begin impeachment,” Warren tweeted on Friday. “By failing to act, Congress is complicit in Trump’s latest attempt to solicit foreign interference to aid him in US elections. Do your constitutional duty and impeach the president.”
Donald Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which he reportedly asked eight times for the Ukrainian government to investigate Biden’s son, took place on July 25, the day after Robert Mueller testified before Congress. Critics have said that this is a smoking gun of Trump’s attempt to encourage foreign influence in American elections, which the president has vehemently denied doing with regard to Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
Biden too has pushed back, saying that Trump is inviting foreign interference because he knows that Biden will “beat him like a drum” in the upcoming election.
Despite the growing number of Democrats calling for impeachment to begin, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has refrained from moving forward, calling for a measured approach and a deliberate lead-up that includes investigations to gather airtight evidence against Trump.
But Pelosi has also pushed forcefully against Trump in other areas, including recently calling for Congress to pass a law clarifying that sitting presidents can be indicted . The Department of Justice currently has a policy against this, but Pelosi pointed that that this has never been written into law or even codified in department policies.