House Judiciary Committee chairman on impeachment: "All options are on the table"
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler says "all options are on the table" regarding the initiation of impeachment proceedings against President Trump. Nadler spoke following special counsel Robert Mueller's first public statement on the Russia investigation Wednesday afternoon.
"With respect to impeachment, all options are on the table, and nothing should be ruled out," Nadler said in New York.
He also blasted the president's claim that the Mueller report fully exonerated him. "The special counsel has clearly demonstrated that President Trump is lying," Nadler said. "He's lying about the special counsel's findings, lying about the testimony of key witnesses in the special counsel's report, and above all lying in saying the special counsel found no obstruction and no collusion."
But he did not directly answer a question about whether he would issue a subpoena for Mueller to appear before the Judiciary Committee, which has been seeking more of the underlying information in the Mueller report, as well as testimony by the special counsel.
"Mr. Mueller told us a lot of what we needed to hear today," Nadler responded.
Earlier, Mueller had said that he did not plan to speak publicly again about the report.
"I hope and expect that this will be the only time I will speak to you about this matter," Mueller told reporters in Washington. He also acknowledged that while there were conversations about whether he would testify before Congress, "the report is my testimony."
And, he added, "I would not provide information beyond that which is already public."
Mueller said Wednesday that his report had not cleared Mr. Trump on the question of obstruction. "If we had confidence that the president did not clearly commit a crime, we would have said so," he said. And he explained that his office never considered indicting him for obstruction of justice because a longstanding Justice Department policy prohibits the indictment of a sitting president.
The Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel opinion says that "the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing," Mueller said. This prompted some Democratic lawmakers and politicians -- including Senators Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, and Rep. Justin Amash, the only Republican openly calling for Mr. Trump's impeachment -- to interpret Mueller's remarks as a referral for Congress to investigate.
"The special counsel did not exonerate the president of the United States of obstruction of justice," Nadler said in his news conference. "The Constitution points to Congress to take action to hold the president accountable for his misconduct. It falls to Congress to respond to the crimes, lies, and other wrongdoing of President Trump."
Although the special counsel did not reach a conclusion on whether Mr. Trump obstructed justice in his report, the Mueller report did examine 10 "discrete acts" in which Mr. Trump may have done so. Attorney General William Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein determined that Mr. Trump did not obstruct justice.