A Lone Voice in the Republican Wilderness

This past weekend Justin Amash, a Republican Congressman from Michigan tweeted that: “Attorney General Barr has deliberately misrepresented Mueller’s report. President Trump has engaged in impeachable conduct. Partisanship has eroded our system of checks and balances. Few members of Congress have read the report.” 

He elaborated: “Contrary to Barr’s portrayal, Mueller’s report reveals that President Trump engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that meet the threshold for impeachment. 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.” 

Amash’s judgment is supported by more than 900 former federal prosecutors who signed onto a letter making this exact point. Amash’s statement is news only because every other Republican has acted as if there is nothing to condemn about Trump’s conduct, and many of them have lent support to Trump in his quest for an imperial presidency. That so many Republican legislators and others in positions of power have sunk to such moral depths has opened a deep crack in the foundations of American democracy.