U.S. Sen. Angus King of Maine said Sunday there is not yet enough evidence from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between President Trump and the Russian government during his presidential campaign to justify starting an impeachment process.
King, appearing on the NBC News program “Meet the Press,” commented on court filings Friday by the Mueller team and federal prosecutors in New York that said Trump directed and coordinated with Micheal Cohen, his former personal lawyer, to violate campaign finance laws by arranging payments to two women to stay quiet about alleged affairs they had with Trump. The filings also provided new evidence of Russian efforts to create a political alliance with Trump.
King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, said the investigation has yet to deliver the evidence that would prove collusion between Trump and the Russians. He said starting an impeachment inquiry without it would just send the message to Trump’s base that the Mueller investigation is politically motivated.
“We don’t want to create a precedent where the Congress of one party unseats a president of another party. We become a kind of parliamentary system,” said King.
King, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said court filings earlier last week regarding former national security adviser Michael Flynn were more significant than Friday’s filings because Mueller recommended no jail time for Flynn for lying to the FBI due to the extent of cooperation Flynn has provided to the special investigation.
“That is the one that really raises the very difficult questions that go to the heart of the question of whether there were relationships between the Trump campaign and the Russian government,” King said.
King also said he is in a “wait-and-see mode” when it comes to confirmation of William P. Barr, Trump’s pick to become the next attorney general. Barr, who served as attorney general from 1991 to 1993 in the first Bush administration, has been critical of the Russia investigation. King said Barr would have to commit to protecting the integrity of the Mueller investigation to get his vote. King said the president himself should want the investigation to be completed. Anything less would leave a cloud over the Trump administration, he said.
“If he is as innocent as he says he is, he should want this to go to completion,” King said.
U.S. Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, asks a question during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act on Capitol Hill in Washington in June 2017. (Susan Walsh/AP Photo)
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