House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler accused President Trump of violating federal law while defending his committee’s decision to hold a hearing for former special counsel Robert Mueller.
The New York representative appeared on Fox News Sunday with host Chris Wallace to explain why House Democrats are pushing Mueller to testify about his 448-page report. Mueller has previously stated that he will not testify to anything outside what is already written in the report.
“The president and the attorney general and others have spent the last few months systematically lying to the American people about what the investigation found,” Nadler said. “They’ve said that it found no collusion, found no obstruction, that it exonerated the president. All three of those statements are absolute lies.”
“It found a great deal of collusion, it found a great deal of obstruction of justice by the president, and it pointedly refused to exonerate the president,” Nadler continued. “We think it’s very important for the American people to hear directly what the facts are because this is a president who was violated the law six ways from Sunday. If anyone else had been accused of what the report finds the president had done, they would have been indicted.”
Nadler’s committee is responsible for approving an impeachment motion, should Democratic leadership agree to back one. So far, Nadler has opposed such a move and stood behind House Speaker Nancy Pelosi against a growing number of Democrats in the caucus that want to impeach Trump.
Nadler did say, however, that Mueller’s report includes evidence that Trump’s behavior meets the threshold for impeachment.
“The report presents very substantial evidence that the president is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors and we have to let Mueller present those facts to the American people,” Nadler said.
