Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter is fully behind a Democratic effort to impeach President Donald Trump.
The four-term U.S. representative in New Hampshire’s 1st District said the president has “clearly said some crazy things,” that he “is attacking the First Amendment,” and that he “does not seem to respect the Constitution.”
Those are some of the reasons the retiring congresswoman gave for backing an impeachment effort by fellow House Democrats.
Shea-Porter’s comments, made Monday in an interview on New Hampshire Now on WKXL radio in Concord, came the same day that ultra-wealthy Democratic donor Tom Steyer announced that he would redouble his $20 million campaign to impeach the president.
Shea-Porter, a longtime member of the House Armed Services Committee, said Trump’s “irresponsible public statements put our troops in danger and weaken our alliances.”
She pointed to, among other things, the nuclear weapons showdown with North Korea and a recent controversial tweet by Trump about having a bigger nuclear button than North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
The administration defended the president’s tweet as an effort to “keep Kim on his toes.”
Shea-Porter also accused Trump of lying and called his “appointing judges that aren’t qualified ... deeply concerning.”
And she argued the president has violated the emoluments clause in the Constitution, which restricts members of the government from receiving gifts, emoluments, offices or titles from foreign countries without congressional consent.
“He’s clearly profited and ... his family’s clearly profited. And what they said they would do about the money was not what they did do. So he didn’t tell us the truth,” Shea-Porter said.
A federal judge last month dismissed a pair of lawsuits claiming that Trump’s failure to divest himself of his real estate empire and other business holdings violated the emoluments clause.
“I will do what I have to do,” Shea-Porter said, adding that she’s “signed on” to articles of impeachment against the president that were introduced in November by Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee.
Cohen’s measure cites several of Trump’s actions while in office as “violates of the U.S. Constitution.” And Cohen claimed that the president has obstructed justice with his firing last year of then-FBI Director James Comey.
Last month a separate push for impeachment by Democratic Congressman Al Green of Texas was overwhelmingly defeated in the U.S. House by a 364-58 vote.
While Green’s measure accused the president of “high misdemeanors,” it didn’t touch on Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and alleged collusion between Moscow and officials with the Trump campaign.
While Trump has repeatedly denied all of the allegations, the issue is part of an ongoing investigation by U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller. And some Democrats say the findings of Mueller’s report could eventually warrant an impeachment vote.
Shea-Porter said the reason she abstained from voting on Green’s motion was that it didn’t include the Russian allegations.
“It has to be on what happened in Russia and the lying,” she said.
“I’m waiting for the Mueller report,” she added. “To me, that had the greatest heft.”
New Hampshire’s other member of the U.S. House, Democrat Annie Kuster, voted against Green’s resolution.
With a current large GOP majority in the U.S. House, any moves by Democrats to try and impeach the president have little or no chance of passage. The White House and Republican leaders call the push for impeachment a “baseless radical effort.”
Shea-Porter, who announced in October that she wouldn’t run for re-election in 2018, criticized Republicans in Congress who have yet to forcefully speak out against the president.
“The Republican Party is a mere shadow of its former self,” she said. “They are in the process of destroying a once-great party, and the country needs two political parties.”