What WA Reps' Call For Impeachment Inquiry Means

SEATTLE, WA — On Friday, just three of Washington's seven-member Democratic Congressional delegation supported an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. By Sunday afternoon, all seven were on board.

What happened? Apparently they finally had time to digest what Robert Mueller told two Congressional committees last week.

"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," U.S. Rep. Kim Schrier, D-Issaquah, wrote in a statement.

U.S. Reps. Suzan DelBene, D-Redmond, Derek Kilmer, D-Gig Harbor, and Denny Heck, D-Olympia, all made similar statements on Sunday. They join U.S. Reps. Adam Smith, D-Renton, Pramila Jayapal, D-Seattle, and Rick Larsen, D-Bellinghamn, who had all asked for an impeachment inquiry before this weekend.

But what does an impeachment inquiry mean? It's different from just a straight vote to impeach the president. Electing to do an inquiry would mean the start of a process where the House Judiciary Committee gathers evidence for an eventual impeachment vote, and that includes getting interviews and documents the White House has so far refused to give up.

Then, the House could with a simple majority vote to impeach the president — that's what happened to Bill Clinton in 1998.

Larsen is an outlier here, however. He is the only member of Washington's delegation that has called for impeachment with a capital I, not just an inquiry.

"He should not be president of the United States," Larsen said in a July 18 statement following Trump's "go back" comments about U.S. Reps. Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley.

"Congress has a responsibility laid out in the Constitution to perform oversight. Further underscoring his disregard for the Constitution, the President has attacked the free press, ignored congressional subpoenas and instructed his own staffers not to cooperate with ongoing investigations. With every act of defiance, he continues to disgrace his office and violate the checks and balances that are the foundation of the Constitution," DelBene wrote in a statement Sunday.

Even if the House conducts an inquiry and then votes to impeach, Trump would still have to be convicted in the Senate, which is controlled by Republicans.

There are now about 105 members of Congress who support an impeachment inquiry. Washington's Republican representatives — Jaime Herrera Beutler, Dan Newhouse, and Cathy McMorris Rodgers — do not support impeachment.