Kamala Harris: Justin Amash put ‘country before party’ with Trump impeachment call

Rep. Justin Amash, Michigan Republican, has taken plenty of flak for his call to impeach President Trump, but the congressman received a shout-out Tuesday from Sen. Kamala D. Harris, a candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

Ms. Harris of California praised Mr. Amash for putting “country before party.”

“What he has done is what we need more people in the United States Congress to do, which is to put country before party,” Ms. Harris said during an MSNBC town hall at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

Mr. Amash, the only Republican to support impeaching Mr. Trump, accused the president in a series of May 18 tweets of obstruction of justice, citing special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, which found no evidence of campaign collusion with Russia.

“I think it’s really important that we do our job as a Congress, that we not allow misconduct to go undeterred,” Mr. Amash said at a Tuesday town hall in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The congressman has since become something of a pariah within the GOP — Mr. Trump said he has been “a loser for a long time,” while House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said he was “just looking for attention” — while earning new respect on the left.

MSNBC moderator Lawrence O’Donnell said Mr. Amash “has gone beyond what the Democratic leadership of the House of Representatives has said about impeachment.”

Ms. Harris, who said last week that Congress should “take the steps toward impeachment,” said Tuesday that she supported the “process of impeachment.”

“So when we talk about a process of impeachment, it is about the checks and balances that the Framers imagined would be in place to be a check against abuses, and that is another reason why I support that process,” she said.

As for Mr. Amash: “What he is talking about is right,” Ms. Harris said. “We must put country before party on a fundamental interest that is about the integrity of our democracy.”