Monday on MSNBC’s “Hardball,” Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) said if President-elect Donald Trump or staff on his campaign had “collusion” or “exchanges of information,” with Russian government officials about former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, that would justify impeachment.
Partial transcript as follows:
WATERS: When John talked about him being ill legitimate, he talked about the fact about whether or not the Russians did play a role in determining what happened in our elections and also I think John was talking about there are going to be more investigations to determine whether or not Trump or his advocates — people associated with him on his staff on the campaign, whether or not there was some collusion, exchanges of information, and whether of not they were strategizing together and I think that’s what he was trying to describe. Other people are trying to talk about this democracy and whether or not once you question whether someone’s legitimate that you are questioning whether or not the democracy works. People, you know, don’t want it to be that you’re deciding that somehow the electoral system doesn’t work, the democracy doesn’t work, et cetera. He’s talking about this unusual occurrence where in fact we know that the Russians played an important role and they tried to support Mr. Trump and they tried to make sure that Hillary Clinton didn’t get elected. So I think that’s a legitimate discussion.
MATTHEWS: Let’s talk about where that leads to. You raised a good point. If we find out that somebody on behalf of Donald Trump was on the phone or email relations with somebody in Russia or the ambassador from Russia and there was some sort of, as you call it, collusion, then what? Does that make Trump subject to impeachment? What do you mean by the term if there’s connection, collusion — your term.
Watch (Part 2):
WATERS: Here’s what I’m trying to get to—if we discover that Donald Trump or advocates played a role in helping to devise strategy, if they are the ones came up with crooked Hillary, if they are the ones that came up with she’s ill or there is something wrong with her energy and the way he basically described her in the campaign, I think that is something that would put the question squarely on the table whether or not he should be impeached.
MATTHEWS: So you think you could have impeachable offense before you take office, in other words?
WATERS: I think that at the point that investigation discovered and can confirm and document any of that — that that they had a role in helping to strategize, they had a role in attempting to determine the outcome in many ways that they used the information that they got from the DNC when they hacked into our email, et cetera — If that was used against Hillary Clinton in someway, yes, I think that’s impeachable.
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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