Michigan Congressman Amash Tweets Trump’s Conduct Impeachable
There was a Twitter storm unleashed by Republican Michigan Congressman Amash about President Trump on Saturday and Mother Nature on Sunday in Michigan.
Over the weekend Michigan Congressman Justin Amash, R 3rd District, tweeted that after reading the entire Mueller Report he thought that President Trump’s conduct is impeachable. Congressman Amash tweeted:
Here are my principal conclusions:
1. Attorney General Barr has deliberately misrepresented Mueller’s report.
2. President Trump has engaged in impeachable conduct.
3. Partisanship has eroded our system of checks and balances.
4. Few members of Congress have read the report.
When I read this first tweet I was hoping that Congressman Amash would have pointed out in a later tweet what exactly he read that led him to the conclusion that President Trump “engaged in impeachable” conduct, he did not.
He followed that Tweet with:
I offer these conclusions only after having read Mueller’s redacted report carefully and completely, having read or watched pertinent statements and testimony, and having discussed this matter with my staff, who thoroughly reviewed materials and provided me with further analysis.
He then went after Attorney General Barr when he tweeted:
In comparing Barr’s principal conclusions, congressional testimony, and other statements to Mueller’s report, it is clear that Barr intended to mislead the public about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s analysis and findings.
I find the last tweet interesting, because even Special Prosecutor Mueller did not believe that the findings that Attorney General Barr wrote were incorrect or misleading; he just thought more of his summary should have been included. In fact, we found out a few weeks later after the full report was released, minus the redactions, that AG Barr’s letter was correct in describing the bottom line findings of the report.
In Congressman Amash effort to further explain his AG Barr tweet he tweeted:
Barr’s misrepresentations are significant but often subtle, frequently taking the form of sleight-of-hand qualifications or logical fallacies, which he hopes people will not notice.
He followed the last tweet with:
In comparing Barr’s principal conclusions, congressional testimony, and other statements to Mueller’s report, it is clear that Barr intended to mislead the public about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s analysis and findings.
What did he read in the report that Mueller and Barr never found?
Congressman Amash then tweeted:
I offer these conclusions only after having read Mueller’s redacted report carefully and completely, having read or watched pertinent statements and testimony, and having discussed this matter with my staff, who thoroughly reviewed materials and provided me with further analysis.
He still was not finished with this topic, as he then tweeted:
Impeachment, which is a special form of indictment, does not even require probable cause that a crime (e.g., obstruction of justice) has been committed; it simply requires a finding that an official has engaged in careless, abusive, corrupt, or otherwise dishonorable conduct.
To justify his last tweet and overall conclusion Congressman Amash tweeted:
In fact, Mueller’s report identifies multiple examples of conduct satisfying all the elements of obstruction of justice, and undoubtedly any person who is not the president of the United States would be indicted based on such evidence.
He followed up by tweeting:
While impeachment should be undertaken only in extraordinary circumstances, the risk we face in an environment of extreme partisanship is not that Congress will employ it as a remedy too often but rather that Congress will employ it so rarely that it cannot deter misconduct.
On this last tweet I can agree that the word and threat of impeachment has been used so often during the presidencies of Clinton, Bush “W”, Obama and now President Trump it has been dumbed down and used more as a political hammer than what it was truly intended to be used for.
Congressman Amash then went after most of the rest of Congress when he tweeted:
Few members of Congress even read Mueller’s report; their minds were made up based on partisan affiliation—and it showed, with representatives and senators from both parties issuing definitive statements on the 448-page report’s conclusions within just hours of its release.
I would agree with Congressman Amash when he stated that most of Congress probably did not read the full report. Also I told you he went on a twitter storm.
His last tweet on the subject of impeachment and President Trump’s conduct was:
America’s institutions depend on officials to uphold both the rules and spirit of our constitutional system even when to do so is personally inconvenient or yields a politically unfavorable outcome. Our Constitution is brilliant and awesome; it deserves a government to match it.
Wow that was quite a bit of tweets, and I was a bit surprised that he used the Twitter application to make such a long and what should have been in-depth discussion about the subject. He should have written an in-depth opinion piece. I am sure that piece would have been published in most papers and discussed on all the news and cable stations as was most likely his intention. I say most likely his intention, not from a judgement standpoint; it is up to you to decide his intentions.
Did Congressman Amash go on his Twitter storm on principled grounds or on a desire to spread his name across the land and get invited on all the news channels?
Once again that is up for you to decide. Congressman Amash is my Congressman, as well as many of my listeners, and has been in my studio many times for in-depth interviews. Yesterday I extended an invitation to come on my show to discuss his latest Twitter storm, so the ball is now in his court. I hope he picks up that ball and decides to further explain his thoughts on this subject to his constituents.
In the meantime, what are your thoughts?
By the way; do you remember that Congressman Amash did say earlier this year he had not ruled out running for president as Libertarian. I am not saying that is why Congressman Amash tweeted what he tweeted, he has called himself on my show a Constitutionalist who leans libertarian. As well as the fact that he has never had a problem with speaking or tweeting his mind if he felt it was the right thing to do even if it angered the powers that be in the Republican party.
Due to Congressman Amash’s actions last Saturday he has brought on a primary challenger, State Representative Jim Lower.