Trump on impeachment: 'I win the election easier'
President Donald Trump said Friday that he thinks if Democrats went through with impeachment proceedings, he would "win the election easier."
"I think I win the election easier," Trump told NBC's Chuck Todd when asked if impeachment is good politics for the president.
A number of Democratic lawmakers, including most of the 2020 presidential candidates, have called for an impeachment inquiry to be opened. The calls were sparked anew last month after former special counsel Robert Mueller made a rare public statement where he defended the findings from his report on the Russia investigation.
In his remarks, Mueller also laid out his decision to not bring charges against the president while also not clearing Trump of criminal wrongdoing for possible obstruction of justice, saying that "if we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said that."
The former special counsel said investigators were essentially blocked by long-standing Justice Department policy that prohibits the criminal prosecution of sitting presidents.
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Since then, at least 78 lawmakers in the House — including Republican Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, the sole Republican in Congress to call for impeachment — have called either called for impeachment proceedings to begin or called outright for Trump to be impeached and face a trial in the Senate that could result in his removal from office.
One of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's longtime allies, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., has also called for an impeachment inquiry to be opened.
"President Trump certainly has committed all kinds of offenses that meet the standard of impeachment, high crimes and misdemeanors," Schakowsky, a senior chief deputy whip, said in a video statement posted Wednesday.
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Although there are a growing number of Democrats calling for impeachment, Pelosi, D-Calif., has been hesitant to authorize the opening of an inquiry until she believes there is a solid case built that could be presented to the GOP-controlled Senate which acts as the jury hearing the trial of alleged wrongdoing by the president. In addition, she has said that the 2020 election is the best way to get Trump out of office.
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In the TV interview excerpts released Friday, Trump said that Pelosi has not allowed House Democrats to move forward with impeachment proceedings because "I think she feels that I will win much easier."
Despite Trump believing that impeachment could result in a positive outcome for him, the president said he's "not sure that I like having it."
"Look, I did nothing wrong," he said. "So impeachment's a very unfair thing because nothing that I did was wrong."
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump on impeachment: 'I win the election easier'
