WASHINGTON (REUTERS) - Donald Trump lashed out on Sunday (May 19) at the first Republican congressman to call the US president's behaviour impeachable, while Democrats warned Trump's stonewalling of congressional probes is strengthening the case for an impeachment inquiry.

Trump called Republican Representative Justin Amash "a total lightweight" and "a loser" on Twitter, a day after the Michigan conservative said the Mueller report showed that the Republican president "engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that meet the threshold for impeachment."

Amash's criticism made calls in the US Congress for Trump's impeachment bipartisan, though just barely, with most Republicans still standing by the president at a time of economic growth, turbulent markets and global trade tensions.

Saying most lawmakers have not read it, Amash cited Special Counsel Robert Mueller's 448-page report on Russian meddling in Trump's favour in the 2016 US election.

On Twitter on Saturday, Amash said the report showed Trump had obstructed justice and added, "President Trump has engaged in impeachable conduct."

A frequent Trump critic, Amash is a part of the House Freedom Caucus, a conservative faction. He has also signaled he would consider running as a libertarian against Trump in 2020.

Counter-punching in his usual style, Trump tweeted: "Never a fan of @justinamash, a total lightweight who opposes me and some of our great Republican ideas and policies just for the sake of getting his name out there through controversy ... Justin is a loser who sadly plays right into our opponents hands!" Trump will have a chance to make his case to supporters on Monday at a rally planned for Montoursville, Pa.

Amash's comments echoed the conclusions of many Democrats.

House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that Trump was moving closer to impeachment with his stonewalling of numerous congressional investigations of him and his presidency.

Still, Democrats are divided about impeachment. With 2020 election campaigns heating up, Pelosi said impeachment proceedings would be "divisive" for the country.

No US president has ever been removed from office as a direct result of the US Constitution's impeachment process.

The House of Representatives has impeached two presidents. Both were acquitted by the Senate.

The Mueller report, now at the center of an escalating oversight battle between Trump and House Democrats, detailed extensive contacts between Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia, but did not find that there was a conspiracy with Moscow. The report also described actions Trump took to try to impede Mueller's investigation, but made no formal finding on the question of obstruction, leaving the matter to Congress.

Amash also said on Twitter that Attorney General William Barr, a Trump appointee, "deliberately misrepresented" Mueller's report when he oversaw the roll-out of a redacted version.

There were no signs on Sunday of other Republicans following Amash's lead. Another Trump critic, Republican Senator Mitt Romney, said on Sunday that Amash made "a courageous statement,"yet also told CNN's "State of the Union" program that he did not believe Mueller's findings supported impeachment.

But Pramila Jayapal, a Democratic member of the House Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over impeachment, called Amash's statement "a watershed moment." "Justin Amash coming on board means there is now bipartisan support for really understanding the seriousness of what is in the Mueller report," she said.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, one of six committee chairs leading probes of Trump, said the case for impeachment is being strengthened by White House stonewalling.

"If the only way that we can do our oversight is through an impeachment proceeding, then maybe we have to go down that road," Schiff told CBS' "Face the Nation" program.

"But I think it'll be important to show the American people, this was a decision made reluctantly, this was a decision forced upon us, rather than something we were eager to embrace" Schiff said. </s> Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) resigned Monday evening from the House Freedom Caucus, the conservative congressional group he helped launch in January 2015, after putting himself at odds with lawmakers in calling for impeachment proceedings to begin against President Donald Trump.

“I have the highest regard for them and they’re my close friends,” Amash said in a statement to CNN. “I didn’t want to be a further distraction for the group.”

The Michigan Republican raised eyebrows less than a month ago when he accused President Trump of committing “impeachable” offenses stemming from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on now-debunked collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia. The libertarian-leaning lawmaker also alleged Attorney General William Barr misrepresented Mueller’s key findings. Notwithstanding Amash’s assertions, Mueller found no criminal conspiracy occurred between the 2016 Trump campaign and the Russian government, and further, Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein used the special counsel’s findings to determine the president had not obstructed justice during the two-year-plus probe.

Amash’s position has earned him strong rebuke from Republicans, including President Trump, who has hit back at the congressman, calling him a “loser” and an attention-seeker. Last month, the House Freedom Caucus formally condemned Amash’s remarks on impeachment. “It was every single person who totally disagrees with what he says,” Rep. Jim Jordan (D-OH) said of the 30-lawmaker strong vote. “What concerns me is Justin was viewed as a leader, right, on protecting privacy rights first to First Amendment rights.”

During a recent town hall, Amash was assailed by Trump supporters, including one African-American voter who criticized the congressman’s “demonizing” calls to start impeachment.

“From what I’m seeing, for the black community and minorities, is that Trump is good for America,” the voter said. “And I’m wondering why the Republicans and Democrats are fighting him so much when he’s doing such a good job?”

“You’re demonizing him on something that you know is not true,” he added. “It’s just bewildering to me that you can treat the president of the United States in this way, especially when he’s doing such a good job for minorities and black people.”

Amash responded to the unidentified man, stating that many people “disagree” with his position and claimed “nobody’s demonizing” President Trump. “The person who demonizes people every day is Donald Trump,” he claimed. “He goes on Twitter and calls people names and says the most egregious things about people.”

On top of criticism from members of his own party, Amash’s position has also earned him a primary challenge from Michigan State Rep. Jim Lower (R) and Army National Guardsman Tom Norton.

“Congressman Justin Amash tweets yesterday calling for President Trump’s impeachment show how out of touch he is with the truth and how out of touch he is with people he represents,” Lower said at the time of his campaign launch, per the Detroit Free Press. “He must be replaced and I am going to do it.” </s> Before Melania became a First Lady, discover the wild and unpredictable paths she took on her journey from Slovenia to Mrs. America.

Donald Trump on Sunday dismissed as “a total lightweight” the Republican politician who a day earlier became the first member of the party to call publicly for the US president’s impeachment.

Michigan Representative Justin Amash — a staunch libertarian on the right of the party — declared that any other person would have been prosecuted over Trump’s multiple attempts to thwart Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report into Russian election interference.

“Never a fan of @justinamash, a total lightweight who opposes me and some of our great Republican ideas and policies just for the sake of getting his name out there,” Trump tweeted.

He said that if the Michigan politician had “actually read the biased Mueller Report … he would see that it was nevertheless strong on NO COLLUSION and, ultimately, NO OBSTRUCTION …” Trump called Amash “a loser who sadly plays right into our opponents hands!” Amash, who has broken with his party before, had laid out his case in a series of tweets.

He said Mueller had identified “multiple examples of conduct satisfying all the elements of obstruction of justice.” “Undoubtedly,” Amash added, “any person who is not the president of the United States would be indicted based on such evidence.” Since Mueller issued his voluminous report, Trump has repeatedly attacked its authors as partisans even while insisting it exonerates him of allegations of collusion with Russia or obstruction of justice.

But Democrats note that the report lists around 140 contacts between Trump’s inner circle and various Russians and that it exhaustively details evidence of at least 10 cases where Trump appeared to be interfering with the probe.

Amash has often been a lone voice in his party, and so his stance carried less impact than if it had come from a party mainstay.

A much higher-profile Republican, Senator Mitt Romney, spoke out on Sunday against impeachment even while praising Amash.

“I respect him,” the Republicans’ 2012 presidential nominee and occasional fierce Trump critic, told “Fox News Sunday” of Amash.

“I think it’s a courageous statement. But I believe to make a case for obstruction of justice, you just don’t have the elements.” Democrats have been divided on impeachment but support appears to be growing with the Trump administration resisting numerous congressional requests for witnesses or information.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has cautioned against moving too quickly, noting that the Republican-controlled Senate would likely acquit the president should the House of Representatives impeach him. </s> • GOP Rep. Justin Amash stepped down from the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus on Monday night.
• “I have the highest regard for them, and they’re my close friends,” Amash told CNN. “I didn’t want to be a further distraction for the group.”
• The move comes after Amash ignited a firestorm within his own party by calling for President Donald Trump’s impeachment last month.
• Though his stance was viewed favorably by many in the public, it prompted Trump allies and several top Republicans to disown him.

Michigan Rep. Justin Amash stepped down from the House Freedom Caucus on Monday night, CNN reported.

“I have the highest regard for them, and they’re my close friends,” Amash said. “I didn’t want to be a further distraction for the group.”

The move comes after the lawmaker ignited a firestorm by being the first Republican to call for President Donald Trump’s impeachment last month.

He said he made his decision after reading the former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the Russia investigation, which examined Russia’s interference in the 2016 US election and whether Trump sought to obstruct justice in the inquiry.

Amash wrote on Twitter at the time that he came to his conclusion “only after having read Mueller’s redacted report carefully and completely” and reviewing relevant testimony and materials.

Read more: A Republican congressman just became the first in his party to call for Trump’s impeachment

Amash also sharply criticized Attorney General William Barr’s handling of Mueller’s report, the way it was portrayed to the public, and his subsequent attempts to sugarcoat Mueller’s findings in what many saw as an effort to shield Trump.

At a town hall shortly after making his comments, Amash said “a lot of” congressional Republicans agree with him that Trump should be impeached, but won’t say it publicly.

Amash’s remarks were viewed favorably by much of the general public; indeed, a majority of Americans in an INSIDER poll agreed with the Michigan congressman that Trump committed impeachable offenses.

But he faced a lot of heat from members of his own party, many of whom disowned him after he came out against the president.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy called Amash’s decision a plea for attention during an appearance on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”

“You’ve got to understand Justin Amash. He’s been in Congress quite some time,” McCarthy said. “I think he’s asked one question in all the committees that he’s been in. He votes more with Nancy Pelosi than he ever votes with me. It’s a question whether he’s even in our Republican conference as a whole.”

The move also prompted Michigan State Rep. Jim Lower to launch a primary challenge, citing Amash’s claims as the catalyst.

But the GOP response to Amash was predictable.

Just a few weeks before Amash spoke out against Trump, a media report revealed Sen. Richard Burr, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena to Donald Trump, Jr. The move infuriated Trump’s allies and prompted Republicans to turn on a senator they had previously championed as a calculated leader during tense investigations. </s> In a series of Twitter messages posted on Sunday, President Donald Trump blasted Republican lawmaker Justin Amash, describing the Michigan representative as a “total lightweight” and a “loser.”

Trump suggested that Amash called for his impeachment simply to stir up controversy and promote himself, suggesting that the lawmaker had not even read Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report. Trump insulted and belittled Amash, stating once again that Mueller failed to prove both collusion and obstruction.

“Never a fan of @justinamash, a total lightweight who opposes me and some of our great Republican ideas and policies just for the sake of getting his name out there through controversy,” the president wrote.

“If he actually read the biased Mueller Report, ‘composed’ by 18 Angry Dems who hated Trump, he would see that it was nevertheless strong on NO COLLUSION and, ultimately, NO OBSTRUCTION,” he added.

Trump punctuated the tweets by claiming that there could not have been obstruction, when there isn’t an underlying crime, accusing “the other side” — the intelligence community, and the Democratic Party — of committing crimes. “Justin is a loser who sadly plays right into our opponents [sic] hands!” the president tweeted.

It comes as no surprise that Trump is slamming Amash, given that the representative is the first — and, so far, only — Republican to openly call for impeachment.

As previously reported by The Inquisitr, in a 13-tweet thread posted yesterday, the libertarian-leaning representative broke with the rest of his colleagues, arguing that Trump “has engaged in impeachable conduct.”

Amash explained that his reasoning is based on the Mueller report, which he claims shows that Trump obstructed justice. Amash, he wrote, drew four conclusions from the report, after consulting with members of his staff and reviewing additional materials, as well as related congressional testimonies.

Echoing criticism from House Democrats, Amash said that Attorney General William Barr is guilty of “misleading” the public about Mueller’s findings, going a step further than Democrats and concluding that impeachable offenses are defined in the Constitution as dishonorable and corrupt behavior.

Apart from criticizing Barr and Trump, the Republican lawmaker drew a parallel between his party’s behavior during the impeachment trials of Bill Clinton and now, in the aftermath of the Mueller report. Amash suggested that both parties need to remain principled in such instances, and “uphold” the Constitution regardless of party affiliation of the person violating it.

As HuffPost reported, Amash’s Twitter thread went viral, and resulted in him being praised and applauded by Democratic lawmakers. Notably, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib — who has, unlike top Democrats, openly called for Trump’s impeachment — commended Amash for “putting country first,” asking whether he wants to sign a resolution meant to begin an investigation into impeachment. </s> Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) has stepped down from the conservative House Freedom Caucus, weeks after becoming the first Republican member of Congress to publicly support impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump.

Amash, one of the Freedom Caucus’ founding members, told CNN that he’d announced his resignation at the group’s weekly board meeting on Monday. He said the meeting had been a “positive” one.

“I have the highest regard for them, and they’re my close friends,” Amash said of the Freedom Caucus. “I didn’t want to be a further distraction for the group.”

Amash made waves last month when he tweeted his conviction, based on his reading of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, that Trump had “engaged in impeachable conduct.”

Here are my principal conclusions:

1. Attorney General Barr has deliberately misrepresented Mueller’s report.

2. President Trump has engaged in impeachable conduct.

3. Partisanship has eroded our system of checks and balances.

4. Few members of Congress have read the report. — Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 18, 2019

Top GOP leaders, including the president himself, condemned Amash for his views. The House Freedom Caucus also distanced itself from the congressman, with former chairman Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio telling Politico in May that “every single” member who’d attended that week’s meeting “disagrees with what he says.”

Amash told CNN in March that he’s stopped attending most Freedom Caucus meetings following clashes with members over their differing views on Trump.

The congressman has refused to back down from his calls for Trump’s impeachment.

“I’d do it whether it was a Republican president or a Democratic president. It doesn’t matter. You elected me to represent all of you,” Amash told supporters in Grand Rapids, Michigan, last month. “Congress has a duty to keep the president in check .… And I think we owe it to the American people to represent them, to ensure that the people we have in office are doing the right thing, are of good character, aren’t violating the public trust.” </s> Republican Representative Justin Amash is stepping down from his position with the House Freedom Caucus amid the fallout after he called for President Donald Trump's impeachment.

Amash made the announcement of his voluntary departure on Monday at a Freedom Caucus board meeting, Fox News reported.

Amash said during his remarks that he didn't want to be a 'further distraction' for the influential conservative caucus.

A few weeks ago, the Michigan lawmaker became the only Republican in Congress to openly argue that Trump had committed impeachable offenses. He made the accusations in a lengthy Twitter thread.

'Some of the president's actions were inherently corrupt. Other actions were corrupt—and therefore impeachable—because the president took them to serve his own interests,' Amash posted on May 23.

Jim Jordan, a Republican representative from Ohio, and a member of the Freedom Caucus, told Fox on Monday that Amash mutually came to the decision to step aside with the caucus's chairman, Mark Meadows.

Amash had come under fire from those within his party, and especially the president, after he sided with Democrats who have increased calls for Trump's impeachment after the publication of the Russia report.

'Never a fan of @justinamash, a total lightweight who opposes me and some of our great Republican ideas and policies just for the sake of getting his name out there through controversy,' Trump posted to Twitter in response to Amash's call for impeachment.

'Justin is a loser who sadly plays right into our opponents hands!' he continued.

Although more than 50 Democrats in Congress have called for Trump's impeachment, no Republicans – until Amash – had agreed.

Calls for impeachment proceedings increased after Mueller delivered remarks at the Department of Justice last month and said his report is his testimony. He also said he did not charge Trump because it is longstanding DOJ protocol to not charge a sitting president with a federal crime.

Democrats claimed this was basically Mueller telling them it was up to Congress to bring charges against the president and impeach him.

A redacted version of Mueller's 448-page was made public in April, a few weeks after Attorney General Bill Barr classified the report in a four-page memo that claimed it found Trump had committed no crimes.

The report did not find evidence that Trump had conspired with the Kremlin to influence the 2016 elections, but did outline a handful of 'episodes' that were potential grounds for obstruction.

Democrats say this is enough to impeach Trump, and Amash accused Barr of intentionally misrepresenting Mueller's report.

About a week after taking a stance on impeachment, Amash held a town hall with constituents in Michigan.

Amash fielded mixed reviews from about 800 audience members at the event in Grand Rapids.

For more than two hours that evening, Amash took questions from audience members at the DeVos Center for Arts and Worship at Grand Rapids Christian High School.

The majority of attendees peppered the congressman about Mueller's Russia report and the congressman's analysis of the document.

Although many of the audience members applauded the congressman with standing ovations on his courage in calling for Trump's impeachment, others accused him of switching political parties.

'How can you become a Democrat when we voted you in as a Republican?' 57-year-old Diane Luke, who was wearing a 'Make America Great Again' hat, questioned, adding she was disappointed in Amash. </s> Amash is the only Republican in the House to call for impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump. Currently, a quarter of the House Democratic caucus support opening such an inquiry.

Amash, 39, identifies as a libertarian Republican and is considered among the most conservative members of the House, in which he’s served in since 2011. He helped found the Freedom Caucus in 2015, which is chaired by Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., a frequent defender of the president.

“I have the highest regard for them, and they’re my close friends,” Amash told CNN reporter Haley Byrd on Monday evening. “I didn’t want to be a further distraction for the group."

Amash's chief of staff Poppy Nelson confirmed the move to NBC Tuesday.

Meadows said that he had spoken to Amash on Monday, and that Amash did not attend the group's weekly meeting that evening.

“Justin and I have had conversations over the last several weeks and discussed the mission of the Freedom Caucus, which is to represent the millions of Americans who feel like Washington, D.C., has forgotten them," Meadows said. "He felt like his continued affiliation with the caucus would be a distraction, and that it was best for all concerned that he step aside.”

Conservative groups like the Club for Growth, Heritage Action for America and Americans for Prosperity have awarded Amash lifetime ratings of more than 85 percent. But that hasn’t stopped the congressman from bashing Trump publicly.

Last month, Amash posted a series of tweets about his conclusions from reading special counsel Robert Mueller’s redacted report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, saying, “Trump engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that meet the threshold for impeachment.”

The tweets led to Amash receiving his first official 2020 GOP primary challenger — Michigan state Rep. Jim Lower, who said in a statement that he is a “pro-Trump, pro-life, pro-jobs, pro-2nd Amendment, pro-family values Republican,” and that Amash's remarks “show how out of touch he is with the truth, and how out of touch he is with people he represents.”

Amash is often viewed as an outlier within his own conference, as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., noted Tuesday. "Justin Amash can determine his own future, but I think in a philosophical basis he is probably in a different place than a majority of Republicans," McCarthy said at a GOP leadership press conference when asked about the Michigan congressman's resignation from the Freedom Caucus.

In February, Amash was one of 13 Republicans to join 232 Democrats in favor of a bill to overturn Trump’s emergency declaration to build a border wall. A month later, he defected again and joined Democrats in a vote to override the president’s veto of that measure. And in December, Amash was one of only eight Republicans to vote against a spending bill that would have provided $5.7 billion in border wall funding. According to FiveThirtyEight, Amash voted about 54 percent of the time with Trump in the first two years of his presidential term. </s> Rep. Justin Amash, the first Republican to call for President Donald Trump's impeachment following the release of the Mueller report, has left the conservative House Freedom Caucus and its board, a source close to Amash confirmed to ABC News on Tuesday.

"I have the highest regard for them and they're my close friends," Amash told CNN on Monday. "I didn't want to be a further distraction for the group."

Amash publicly condemned President Trump on Twitter in May saying that after reading the Mueller report he believes that the president engaged in “impeachable conduct.” He also took aim at Attorney General William Barr for “deliberately misrepresenting” the findings of the report.

The caucus was officially founded by conservatives in 2015 at the House Republican retreat in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and now includes more than 30 members. It's chaired by Rep. Mark Meadows, a third-term Republican from North Carolina. Beyond Meadows and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, Reps. Justin Amash, R-Mich., Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, and Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., were all founding members and still serve in the House of Representatives.

Following Amash's remarks about Trump's impeachment, the House Freedom Caucus came out strongly against him.

“We had a good discussion and every single member, I think now based on who was there and our board meeting was probably over 30 members, every single member disagrees and strongly with the position Justin took over the week, and we're focused on the now,” Jordan said to reporters.

The Michigan lawmaker opposed Trump’s primary campaign and in the past couple years close observers believe he has grown frustrated with the caucus’s leadership, including Trump loyalist Meadows and Jordan.

While Amash has not signed on to any existing impeachment resolutions proposed by Democrats, in a town hall in Grand Rapids he said it is appropriate for Speaker Nancy Pelosi to proceed with impeachment inquiries and hearings. Ultimately, he says, the ball is in Pelosi's court regarding how to go forward.

"I think it's really important that we do our job as a Congress, that we do not allow misconduct to go undeterred, that we not just say someone can violate the public trust and that there are no consequences to it," Amash said. </s> The Michigan congressman Justin Amash has called for Donald Trump to be impeached, adding a first Republican voice to a growing chorus of Democrats demanding Congress move against the president.

Amash is a libertarian and independent-minded politician who has flirted with the idea of a run against Trump in 2020, and has in turn been attacked by the White House. Elected in the Tea Party wave of 2010, he was a founder of the House Freedom Caucus, which has become a hard-right mouthpiece for Trump.

No other Republican in Congress has said Trump should be impeached.

In a series of tweets on Saturday, Amash said special counsel Robert Mueller had in his investigation of Russian election interference identified “multiple examples of conduct satisfying all the elements of obstruction of justice, and undoubtedly any person who is not the president of the United States would be indicted based on such evidence”.

Mueller did not find evidence of a conspiracy between Trump and Russia but did lay out extensive contacts between aides and Moscow and 11 instances of potential obstruction of justice by the president or his campaign. On the obstruction question, Mueller said Congress should decide what happened next.

In summarising Mueller’s work before Congress had seen it, however, the attorney general, William Barr, said he had decided Trump had not obstructed justice. The president and his supporters immediately claimed total exoneration, a drumbeat that has not slackened since.

Amash said Barr “has deliberately misrepresented” Mueller’s work in presentations to the public and congressional testimony.

“Contrary to Barr’s portrayal,” Amash said, “Mueller’s report reveals that President Trump engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that meet the threshold for impeachment.”

Of that threshold, he wrote that though the “high crimes and misdemeanors” mentioned in the constitution are “not defined, the context implies conduct that violates the public trust”.

Impeachment, he wrote, “simply requires a finding that an official has engaged in careless, abusive, corrupt or otherwise dishonorable conduct”.

Impeachment would be initiated by the House judiciary committee. But in a political calculation Democratic leaders have held off, unsure of the effect on voters and sure the process would fail in the Republican-controlled Senate, where a two-thirds majority would be required to convict Trump and remove him from office.

Amash lamented the effect of America’s political divide, writing that “while impeachment should be undertaken only in extraordinary circumstances, the risk we face in an environment of extreme partisanship is not that Congress will employ it as a remedy too often but rather that Congress will employ it so rarely that it cannot deter misconduct.

“Our system of checks and balances relies on each branch’s jealously guarding its powers and upholding its duties under our constitution. When loyalty to a political party or to an individual trumps loyalty to the constitution, the rule of law – the foundation of liberty – crumbles.”

The Trump administration has refused to comply with House requests and subpoenas for records including the un-redacted Mueller report and its underlying evidence and Trump’s tax returns, raising claims on the left that the president is acting against the constitution in a dangerous grab for power.

Amash said that while “few members of Congress even read Mueller’s report” – he said he had, in its entirety, and had consulted with his staff – “their minds were made up based on partisan affiliation and it showed, with representatives and senators from both parties issuing definitive statements on the 448-page report’s conclusions within just hours of its release.”

Democrats and Republicans had “shift[ed] their views 180 degrees”, he said, “depending on whether they’re discussing Bill Clinton or Donald Trump”.

Twenty years ago, Clinton was impeached by a Republican House but acquitted by the Senate. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a key Trump supporter now, was a House impeachment manager then. His statements from two decades ago have been played in near-rotation on mainstream cable news.

Amash concluded by saying elected officials should “uphold both the rules and spirit of our constitutional system even when to do so is personally inconvenient or yields a politically unfavorable outcome”.

Reaction varied across the political spectrum, Amash’s comments being greeted by Trump opponents and dismissed by Trump supporters. Among Republican opponents of Trump, George Conway, a lawyer who is married to senior White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, said: “And he is … correct.”
Justin Amash from Michigan's 3rd congressional district becomes the first Republican U.S. Representative to support the impeachment of President Donald Trump.