5/30/2019

IMPEACHMENT/JUSTICE DEPARTMENT/RUSSIA INVESTIGATION/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump expressed bewilderment on Thursday [5-30-19] at the prospect that House Democrats could even consider moving to oust him from office, calling impeachment a ‘dirty, filthy, disgusting word’…Circling back to whether he thought he would be impeached, he told reporters, ‘I don’t think so, because there was no crime.’ He returned to a flawed argument he and his backers have long put forth to dismiss the threat of Trump’s impeachment…Trump has frequently fallen back on the lack of charges stemming from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation to argue against his impeachment, though his legal rationale is not solid. The phrase ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ as a justification for impeachment is not defined in the Constitution. But constitutional scholars say that it likely conveys some violation of public trust in addition to possible statutory violations.”

Caitlin Oprysko, “Trump on impeachment: ‘It’s a dirty, filthy, disgusting word’,” Politico, May 30, 2019 9:41 am