Montana Gov. Steve Bullock on Thursday declined to join many of his fellow 2020 Democratic presidential candidates who say Congress should immediately begin impeachment proceedings against President Trump, saying he’d rather focus on issues like health care and taxes on the campaign trail.
“I think we should have the full investigations…oversight that’s occurring right now,” Mr. Bullock said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe. “I would much rather that be the focus…we have to see where these investigations [and] the oversight goes.”
He did say that Mr. Trump and his staff have been “stonewalling” and that he doesn’t want to normalize “false statements,” but that he’d rather spend the next year-and-a-half talking about issues like health care and taxes.
He said he’s not hearing much about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report or impeachment while he’s campaigning in Iowa, where he’s spent a good deal of time since entering the presidential race earlier this month.
“I’m hearing about farm prices. I’m hearing about concern of losing rural hospitals. I’m hearing about, ’can I stay in my community?’ because while the economy is booming for some people, a lot of folks don’t feel that,” he said. “So I’m hearing about those base issues of health care, jobs, education, and I think that’s what we got to be focused on for the next year-and-a-half.”
Mr. Mueller said Wednesday said that Justice Department guidelines preclude bringing federal charges against a sitting president, so he didn’t make a determination on whether Mr. Trump committed crimes stemming from the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Some 2020 Democratic contenders said they took Mr. Mueller’s statement as an implicit impeachment referral to Congress, and that his comments added a new sense of urgency to the situation.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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