Free Speech For People Board Chair, Ben Clements, was on WGBH News to discuss the possibility of Congress beginning an impeachment investigation of the president, in the wake of the report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, which is widely viewed as an impeachment referral to Congress.

As Clements recently noted in an op-ed for the Boston Globe, written with Free Speech For People Legal Director, Ron Fein, the Mueller report is a roadmap for Congress to begin an impeachment inquiry of the president. The Mueller report highlights the president’s repeated attempts to obstruct justice and interfere with the investigation by the Special Counsel.

Congress must not shirk its constitutional duty in the face of Trump’s continued violations. As Ben explains:

“We’ve got the Mueller Report. We have 450 extremely damning, incriminating pages of evidence against Donald Trump. The Democrats do not have any more excuse to delay [impeachment investigations].”

Watch the full interview here:

The battle to access the full Mueller report is raging in Congress. Last week, the House Judiciary Committee authorized a subpoena to require Attorney General William Barr to provide Mueller’s full, 400-page, unredacted report of his investigation. However, in a recent decision, McKeever v. Barr, the court “reaffirmed the principle of grand jury secrecy and concluded that a court has no ‘inherent power’ to release grand jury information.” This decision could give Barr a plausible basis to resist the subpoena and to continue his cover up of vital information due to Congress and the American people.

In a recent op-ed, Philip Allen Lacovara, former counsel to the Watergate special prosecutor and Larry Tribe, a law professor at Harvard Law School, argues that the strongest legal recourse available to the House is to open an impeachment inquiry.

Lacovara draws a parallel with Nixon’s impeachment, explaining:

During the Watergate investigation, the special prosecutor working with a grand jury developed a report detailing the evidence tending to show that President Richard M. Nixon had committed various federal crimes, including obstruction of justice, that might constitute grounds for impeachment.

 He explains that opening a formal impeachment inquiry against Nixon allowed the House Judiciary Committee to bypass the decision of “grand jury secrecy,” and allowed the Committee to access the report and underlying evidence against President Nixon.

Given this history and the challenges facing the House to fully access the Mueller report, the House Judiciary Committee should focus on its strongest argument and start an impeachment inquiry against President Trump now.

As Lacovara and Tribe explain:

Trump’s selection of his new attorney general may prove to be his best line of defense — unless Pelosi revisits her stance and directs the House Judiciary Committee to include impeachment within its investigatory ambit.

Read the op-ed in the Washington Post here and read more about the fight to access the Mueller Report in Politico here.

Last week, Free Speech For People Legal Director, Ron Fein, sat down with Sonali Kolhatkar, on Rising Up With Sonali, to discuss the end of the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and its implications for Trump’s future.

In his summary, Attorney General William Barr quotes Mueller’s report directly: “while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

Regardless of whether Trump committed any “crimes,” we still have plenty of evidence that President Trump has gravely and repeatedly violated the Constitution. The Mueller Report should be made public, but Trump’s actions have already spoken for him, and the answer is impeachment.

Watch Ron Fein’s discussion on Rising Up with Sonali below to learn more about these violations and why the end of Mueller’s report does not mean an end to impeachment.

Thursday, March 14, Free Speech For People Co-Founder and President, John Bonifaz, was on Democracy Now! to make the case for why Congress must immediately begin impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump.

Watch the interview below and read the transcript on Democracy Now!

At a press conference held on Wednesday, March 6, Representative Rashida Tlaib announced that she plans to file a resolution this month to start an impeachment investigation of President Trump.

Representative Tlaib emphasized the urgency of impeachment and addressed concerns:

“I think every single colleague of mine agrees there’s impeachable offenses. That’s one thing that we all agree on. We may disagree on the pace. We may disagree that we have to wait for certain hearings, but at the same time, I think they all know the dangers of allowing President Trump to continue to violate our United States Constitution.”

John Bonifaz, Free Speech For People’s Co-Founder and President, joined the new By the People campaign for this historic announcement in Congresswoman Tlaib’s office, and he also spoke at the press conference, highlighting the overwhelming evidence that Trump has committed impeachable offenses. Bonifaz expressed Free Speech For People’s support of Representative Tlaib, stating:

“We applaud Congresswoman Tlaib for her courageous and bold leadership, and we urge all Members of Congress to join her.”

He went on to urge Congress to act now to address this constitutional crisis:

“Now is not the time for traditional congressional oversight. Now is the time for Members of Congress to face this extraordinary moment in history, to confront this constitutional crisis threatening our nation, and to start an impeachment investigation of this president.”

Read more about Representative Tlaib’s press conference and her plans to file the resolution in the Detroit News and in Newsweek.

You can also read Representative Rashida Tlaib’s op-ed, co-authored with John Bonifaz, in the Detroit Free Press here.