Maine independent Sen. Angus King is calling impeachment “a last resort” in the ongoing investigations into President Donald Trump's alleged conduct around the 2016 election.
The President faces allegations of collusion with the Russian government, as well as allegedly instructing his lawyer, Michael Cohen, to lie about Trump's Russian business prospects and personal affairs involving some 'hush money' that violated campaign finance laws.
“I don't think that there's evidence yet available to the public where there would be more or less a consensus that this was an appropriate path," King said Sunday morning on NBC’s Meet the Press.
King also called the findings to emerge from the Cohen investigation this week “disturbing,” but he says even more disturbing is the heavily redacted memo to come from special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Trump's alleged ties to Russia. King says that memo essentially shifts culpability from President Trump's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and could be seen as putting it onto the President, but nothing is really known yet.
Any move toward impeachment would likely be seen as a partisan attack.
“We don't want to create a precedent where congress of one party unseats the president of another party for essentially political reasons,” King said. “If that happens, then we've changed our system. We've become a kind of parliamentary system, because you're overturning the will of the voters.”
King also remarked that former attorney general, William Barr, who has been nominated to hold the post again after serving in the role under the late George H. W. Bush, must allow the Mueller probe to continue without interference to get his confirmation vote.
