This morning, Congressman Al Green announced plans to introduce articles of impeachment against the President.

From Congressman Green’s speech:

I will bring articles of impeachment against the President of the United States of America for obstructing a lawful investigation. And I do so, Mr. Speaker, because I will not put party above people, I will not put politics above principle, and I will not put this president above the law…

We cannot allow the paralysis of analysis to thwart the obstruction of justice that must be brought before Congress…

And I’m going to keep my word today. If this House does not bring these articles of impeachment before this august body, each member has the authority and opportunity to do so. I will not allow history to show that this Congress did not take a vote on the impeachment of a reckless, ruthless, lawless president.

Watch the full announcement below. And, to join Congressman Green in holding the President accountable to the law, take action here. 

In a recent opinion piece in the New York Times, Elizabeth Drew, a veteran reporter who covered Watergate, lays out a clear argument for why the House should begin impeachment investigations of President Donald Trump.

She states:

The founders put the impeachment clause in the Constitution to allow Congress to hold accountable, between elections, a president who’s abusing power. They specified that “high crimes and misdemeanors” are not necessarily crimes on the books but arise from the singular power of the presidency.

Ms. Drew further clarifies misconceptions about impeachment, drawing from history and the circumstances of the impeachment investigation of President Nixon:

Many people are getting their history and their definition of impeachment wrong by asserting that what forced Nixon to resign was the revelation in August 1974, very late in the process, of a recording of his trying to obstruct justice. This leads them to the erroneous conclusion that it’s essential to find a “smoking gun” to impeach a president.

When, in fact, the House Judiciary Committee had already approved three articles of impeachment against Nixon by the time the tapes were discovered. There is no need to find a “smoking gun” to begin an impeachment investigation. We have already established eleven grounds for impeachment, including obstruction of justice and using the office of the presidency to prosecute political adversaries – two of the same grounds upon which Nixon was implicated.

The supposed political risks of starting an impeachment investigation do not outweigh the numerous abuses perpetrated by Trump. To hold off on the impeachment fight would only condone the president’s ongoing constitutional violations.

As Ms. Drew asserts:

It’s hard to imagine [the founding fathers would] put political convenience on the same footing as the security of the Constitution…

The Democrats may succeed in avoiding a tumultuous, divisive fight over impeachment now. But if they choose to ignore clear abuses of the Constitution, they’ll also turn a blind eye to the precedent they’re setting and how feckless they’ll look in history.

To read the full article in the New York Times, click here.

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.