Zoe Lofgren: At least Watergate didn’t involve a foreign power

Rep. Zoe Lofgren on Sunday said President Trump’s Ukraine scandal appears worse than Watergate but she’s willing to hear from the White House before calling it a slam-dunk case.

Ms. Lofgren, a California Democrat who worked on the case against President Richard Nixon as a Capitol Hill aide, said she doesn’t think Democrats have “got it wrong” so far, citing evidence Mr. Trump sought political favors from Kyiv. But she wants to let the process play out before the House moves to impeach.

“I would welcome an opportunity to reach a different conclusion about the president’s misconduct,” Ms. Lofrgren told CNN’s State of the Union. “This is not a great time for the country to have a president revealed as doing something so counterproductive to the national interest. It would be wonderful if there were some benign explanation. I’m struggling to think what it would be at this point.”

The White House hasn’t been cooperating with the Democratic inquiry, though the House Judiciary Committee has invited Mr. Trump to participate next week.

Taking stock of history, Ms. Lofgren said Nixon was caught using the levers of government power for ill after the famous break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Office Building.

However, “at least it didn’t involve involving other foreign nations,” she said. “If you take a look at what the Founding Fathers were concerned about, it was the interference by foreign governments in our political system that was one of their gravest concerns.”