Appearing Monday on MSNBC’s All In, Rep. Al Green (D-TX) admitted the “genesis” of impeachment was birthed during then-candidate Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign for the presidency.

(Watch from 1:58)

A partial transcript is as follows:

CHRISTOPHER HAYES: You just mentioned political expediency and insincerity. Those are two charges that have been leveled against Democrats during this entire affair, particularly when the formal impeachment inquiry. You played a starring role in those charges. The argument goes like this of how House Republicans and Trump, the president and his allies, is basically the Democrats wanted to impeach Donald Trump from day one, they cast about looking for a set of facts they could plausibly use to do it, and all of it was pretextual and reverse-engineered to get to this point, exhibit one is Al Green, who’s been calling for the man’s impeachment for two years now. What’s your response to that charge?

REP. AL GREEN: Well, the genesis of impeachment — to be very candid with you — was when the president was running for office and he had members of his own party to talk about his unfitness to hold office. The persons who were running against him, Mr. Romney spoke of his not being fit to hold office. Mr. Cruz made statements about it. So, the president didn’t have the luxury of persons from his party having been on his side as it were throughout this entire ordeal. Sen. Graham has said some hard things about the president.