All togeth­er now for the Con­sti­tu­tion and the rule of law! 

All sev­en of Washington’s [Demo­c­ra­t­ic] U.S. House mem­bers are now call­ing for an impeach­ment inquiry of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump. U.S. Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray also voiced sup­port for an inquiry.

On Sun­day, Reps. Kim Schri­er, of Sam­mamish; Suzan Del­Bene, of Med­i­na; Derek Kilmer, of Gig Har­bor; and Den­ny Heck, of Olympia, cit­ed cor­rup­tion, obstruc­tion of jus­tice and fail­ure to pro­tect elec­tions from for­eign inter­fer­ence as jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for an impeach­ment inquiry, which would be a first step in a lengthy process.

Here are their state­ments in their entirety.

Kim Schri­er:

Every week, I board a five hour flight from Wash­ing­ton, D.C. to come home to my fam­i­ly and to the peo­ple of the 8th Dis­trict who I was elect­ed to serve. Wash­ing­ton, D.C. is a very busy place that doesn’t allow a lot of time for reflec­tion, but the long trip home sure does.

This week, as I depart­ed D.C. for a six week dis­trict work peri­od, I thought about my con­stituents, and the promise I made to them to serve and pro­tect their inter­ests when I’m in the oth­er Wash­ing­ton. On the flight home, I was able to fin­ish lis­ten­ing to the five hours of Robert Mueller’s tes­ti­mo­ny — hear­ing it all laid out so con­cise­ly rein­forced just how many lines of inquiry still need to be pursued.

If I had done any one of the things that our pres­i­dent had done to obstruct jus­tice or act against the inter­est of this coun­try, I would be in jail. The Amer­i­can peo­ple — and the peo­ple of the 8th Dis­trict — deserve to know that no one is above the law.

Think­ing about that, it became intol­er­a­bly frus­trat­ing to con­sid­er how every effort to seek that infor­ma­tion has been slow walked or obstruct­ed, con­sis­tent with so much of the behav­ior made plain in the Mueller report. The Amer­i­can peo­ple deserve to know what tran­spired and to what extent our pres­i­dent is act­ing against the best inter­ests of our nation. Rus­sia is med­dling, and this pos­es imme­di­ate danger.

I have come to believe that step­ping these con­gres­sion­al inves­ti­ga­tions up to the lev­el of an impeach­ment inquiry will be required to get time­ly access to the infor­ma­tion we need for our nation­al secu­ri­ty and nation­al conscience.

I know the peo­ple of the 8th Dis­trict elect­ed me to pro­tect their health care, fight for their fam­i­lies, and pro­tect our envi­ron­ment, and those will always remain my focus while I have the priv­i­lege of serv­ing them in Con­gress. But they also elect­ed me uphold the Con­sti­tu­tion and pro­tect our nation­al secu­ri­ty interests.

And so, I am for­mal­ly call­ing for an impeach­ment inquiry.

Derek Kilmer:

I came to Con­gress with two goals in mind: to see the econ­o­my work bet­ter for peo­ple in my region and to see gov­ern­ment work bet­ter for them. I don’t want to see a gov­ern­ment that is dys­func­tion­al, cor­rupt, and unable to make progress on deliv­er­ing health care, jobs, and edu­ca­tion for the folks I represent.

That’s why I chose to seek this job. It’s why I get on a plane each week and spend time away from my wife and daughters.

In the past few years, it has often been dis­heart­en­ing to see our gov­ern­ment become more polar­ized and less account­able to the Amer­i­can peo­ple. Per­haps nowhere has that been more evi­dent than in the actions of Pres­i­dent Trump.

I’ve long raised con­cerns about his policies.

Each time that I pray that he will appeal to the bet­ter angels of our nature, he instead embraces rhetoric and actions that seek only to divide us fur­ther. But as objec­tion­able as I have found such rhetoric and as unac­cept­able as I have found such poli­cies, they do not rise to the lev­el of impeachment.

How­ev­er, the evi­dence laid out in the Mueller Report – and the tes­ti­mo­ny of Direc­tor Mueller that ampli­fied it – com­mands a high­er lev­el of con­cern. I have read the Mueller Report – when it was first released and again in the days lead­ing up to his tes­ti­mo­ny. The clear evi­dence of cor­rup­tion has already led to mul­ti­ple indict­ments and guilty pleas by the president’s nation­al secu­ri­ty advi­sor, per­son­al attor­ney, and the chair­man of his campaign.

The president’s open accep­tance of sup­port from Rus­sians was unde­ni­ably dis­rup­tive to the integri­ty of our democ­ra­cy. We are now learn­ing that the Rus­sians pen­e­trat­ed elec­tion sys­tems in all 50 states. This ongo­ing threat is real, and it is the duty of both par­ties to pro­tect our democ­ra­cy from a sim­i­lar assault in 2020.

But per­haps most trou­bling is the evi­dence – on mul­ti­ple occa­sions – of obstruc­tion of justice.

The details of the president’s actions – from his inter­ac­tions with for­mer FBI Direc­tor James Comey, to his per­sis­tent efforts to lim­it the scope of the Mueller Inves­ti­ga­tion, to his actions seek­ing to influ­ence tes­ti­mo­ny of oth­ers (many who end­ed up being indict­ed them­selves) – can­not be ignored. In fact, more than 1,000 for­mer fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors – Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans – have said that the evi­dence would be suf­fi­cient to pros­e­cute the pres­i­dent on obstruc­tion charges.

Open­ing an impeach­ment inquiry is dis­rup­tive and it may fur­ther polar­ize a coun­try that is already far too divid­ed. These fac­tors have con­sis­tent­ly giv­en me pause. Beyond that, I have great respect for the lead­ers in the House and the com­mit­tee chairs that have sug­gest­ed a step-by-step approach. I respect their judg­ment and their lead­er­ship, and I agree that the com­mit­tees of juris­dic­tion should con­tin­ue the impor­tant over­sight work that they have begun and pur­sue the facts. I have grap­pled with the fact that the Sen­ate may dis­miss even the strongest evi­dence. Indeed, the Sen­ate may exon­er­ate the president.

In my view, the inci­dents of obstruc­tion and of for­eign inter­fer­ence cit­ed in the Mueller report should not be dis­missed based on pol­i­tics, par­ty bias­es, or the fear of some pre­dict­ed outcome.

More­over, I believe Con­gress can con­tin­ue work­ing to deliv­er on health care, edu­ca­tion and jobs while also fol­low­ing the evi­dence and uphold­ing its oblig­a­tions under the Constitution.

The Amer­i­can peo­ple deserve no less.

At the end of the day, I come back to the rea­son I came to Con­gress in the first place. I want to see more folks I rep­re­sent have good jobs, qual­i­ty health care, and top-notch edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties and I’m com­mit­ted to con­tin­u­ing to work every day toward those ends.

But I also came to Con­gress because I want to see gov­ern­ment work bet­ter for the peo­ple I rep­re­sent. I don’t want a gov­ern­ment that is cor­rupt. I don’t want the les­son to my daugh­ters – or to any Amer­i­cans – to be that actions like these are acceptable.

Obstruct­ing jus­tice and accept­ing assis­tance from for­eign gov­ern­ments sim­ply can­not be a stan­dard that we accept.

The rule of law needs to mean some­thing. The integri­ty of our democ­ra­cy needs to mean some­thing. With that clear focus, I sup­port the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives begin­ning an impeach­ment inquiry.

Den­ny Heck:

For many months mul­ti­ple com­mit­tees of the House have been engaged in inves­ti­ga­tions both of poten­tial­ly ille­gal acts by Pres­i­dent Trump relat­ed to Russia’s “sweep­ing and sys­tem­at­ic” inter­fer­ence in the 2016 elec­tion and of the President’s response to inves­ti­ga­tions into that interference.

As a mem­ber of the House Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee, I’ve been deeply involved in that effort. I’ve sat through hun­dreds of hours of closed and open tes­ti­mo­ny, read and reread the find­ings of the Office of the Spe­cial Coun­sel (the Mueller Report), and spo­ken with and lis­tened to the peo­ple of the Tenth Con­gres­sion­al District.

In last week’s hear­ings, I also had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to hear direct­ly from Spe­cial Coun­sel Mueller and, along with my col­leagues, to per­son­al­ly engage him in ques­tions. After con­sid­er­able reflec­tion and prayer­ful con­sid­er­a­tion, I’ve reached some conclusions.

First, there is no ques­tion that the Pres­i­dent encour­aged, wel­comed and ben­e­fit­ed from the inter­fer­ence of a for­eign adver­sary in our 2016 elec­tion. Fur­ther­more, he has both refused to ful­ly acknowl­edge it occurred and even sug­gest­ed he might wel­come such inter­fer­ence again. The White House has also opposed Con­gres­sion­al mea­sures to enhance elec­tion secu­ri­ty going forward.

This strikes at the very core of our democ­ra­cy and demo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues. America’s elec­tions are for Amer­i­cans. Peri­od. Sup­port of free, fair and open elec­tions is not negotiable.

The Pres­i­dent has also engaged in an aggres­sive and active cov­er-up of the effort to reveal all the facts.

This is par­tic­u­lar­ly true of the many ways in which poten­tial finan­cial con­flicts or moti­va­tions may have guid­ed the Trump cam­paign or sev­er­al of its high-rank­ing offi­cials. This was the essence of my exchange with Spe­cial Coun­sel Mueller dur­ing the hear­ing last week. Amer­i­cans deserve to know the full extent of the facts.

Offi­cial­ly ini­ti­at­ing an impeach­ment inquiry sub­stan­tial­ly strength­ens the legal hand of the House to dis­cov­er all information.

I am famil­iar with the polit­i­cal argu­ments against ini­ti­at­ing an impeach­ment inquiry based on the find­ings to date. For exam­ple, some sug­gest that the Sen­ate is high­ly unlike­ly to con­vict the Pres­i­dent should the House impeach him and that his chances of reelec­tion will there­fore be enhanced. That may be true.

What is truer is that noth­ing less than the rule of law is at stake.

Accord­ing­ly, I sup­port ini­ti­a­tion of an impeach­ment inquiry by the House Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee and will sup­port mea­sures to accom­plish this when Con­gress returns to Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

Suzan Del­Bene, Rick Larsen, Adam Smith, and Prami­la Jaya­pal pre­vi­ous­ly voiced sup­port for a Trump impeach­ment inquiry. Now their col­leagues are on board. The Demo­c­ra­t­ic side of the Wash­ing­ton State del­e­ga­tion is united.

Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray, mean­while, added a sup­port­ive voice of encour­age­ment from across the rotun­da. Mur­ray is the third rank­ing Demo­c­rat in the Unit­ed States Sen­ate, and is always worth pay­ing atten­tion to.

Said Mur­ray in a state­ment pro­vid­ed to NPI and oth­er media out­lets: “I agree with my fel­low mem­bers of the Wash­ing­ton del­e­ga­tion that, as we have learned more about the grav­i­ty of the poten­tial threats to our democ­ra­cy iden­ti­fied in Spe­cial Coun­sel Mueller’s report, it has become clear the House should begin pro­ceed­ings to deter­mine whether the President’s actions neces­si­tate impeachment.”

Only a few days ago, pun­dits and jour­nal­ists work­ing inside news­rooms in New York and the Belt­way were say­ing Mueller’s appear­ance on Capi­tol Hill “had­n’t moved the nee­dle”. Clear­ly, that analy­sis was wrong. It just goes to show the per­ils of jump­ing to con­clu­sions too ear­ly — some­thing that hap­pened repeat­ed­ly in 2016. Big media seem­ing­ly has­n’t learned too much from that election.