Senate intel member says Trump closer to impeachment process

Could we be moving toward an impeachment process? “Reluctantly, I have to say yes,” Sen. Angus King says https://t.co/digVs7JDAd
— The Situation Room (@CNNSitRoom) May 16, 2017

Senate Intelligence Committee member Angus King said Tuesday he believes President Trump is moving toward impeachment territory — following reports that Trump tried to persuade former FBI Director James Comey to pull the plug on the Russia investigation.

“Reluctantly, I have to say yes,” King (I-Maine) told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer when asked whether Trump was getting “closer and closer” to the possibility of “another impeachment process.”
“Obstruction of justice is such a serious offense,” King said. “And I say it with sadness, and reluctance. This is not something I’ve advocated for, the word has not passed my lips in this whole tumultuous three or four months.

“But if indeed the president tried to tell the director of the FBI, who worked for him, that he should drop an investigation — whether it was Michael Flynn or whether it was some investigation that had nothing to do with Russia or politics or the election — that’s a very serious matter.”
Intelligence Committee member Rep. Adam Schiff on Tuesday evening called on Comey to testify before Congress about his alleged conversations with Trump — saying “enough is enough.”
“I think we know enough now, and there has been enough alleged publicly, to want to bring the director back to testify, ideally in open session either before our committee or the Judiciary Committee,” Schiff (D-Calif.) told reporters.
His comments, along with King’s, came in response to a New York Times report claiming Trump pressured Comey to drop the feds’ probe of ex-national security adviser Mike Flynn during a meeting in the Oval Office back in February.
“If true, this is yet another disturbing allegation that the president may have engaged in some interference or obstruction of the investigation,” Schiff said. “[Comey] should come back to the Congress and share what he knows in terms of the president’s conversations with him on any of the Russian investigation.”
Schiff also suggested that the committee subpoena any notes that were taken before or after the alleged meeting.
“Congress really needs to get to the bottom of this,” he said.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said the latest allegations surrounding the Trump White House brought the situation to “Watergate size and scale.”
House Oversight Committee Chair Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) on Tuesday night also said he would be ready to issue a subpoena for the alleged memo that Comey reportedly wrote on Trump’s request to close the Russia probe.
“[The committee] is going to get the Comey memo, if it exists,” Chaffetz tweeted. “I need to see it sooner rather than later. I have my subpoena pen ready.”
He later penned a letter to acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe requesting that “all memoranda, notes, summaries and recordings referring or relating to” the alleged communications between Comey and Trump be handed over by May 24.
“If true, these memoranda raise questions as to whether the President attempted to influence or impede the FBI’s investigation as it relates to Lt. Gen Flynn,” Chaffetz wrote.