‘I can’t sit back while our communities live in fear because of this president’

New Mexico Rep. Debra Haaland, Laguna Pueblo, called for an impeachment inquiry of President Donald J. Trump yesterday.

She released a statement saying how he is “unfit to serve as president” since the day he took office.

“I can’t sit back while our communities live in fear because of this president. He and his friends continue to enrich themselves and abuse their power while New Mexicans are struggling. Meanwhile, the president and his administration stonewall Congress and refuse to cooperate with congressional investigations; they are impeding the ability of Congress to get to the truth,” Haaland said.

“Robert Mueller said it plainly: ‘the special counsel’s report does not exonerate this president.’ Congress has a constitutional tool to shed light on what this administration is hiding and to hold the president accountable. This isn’t political. There is growing evidence of impeachable offenses and I believe we have a responsibility to defend our Constitution and our Democracy. We must move forward with an impeachment inquiry. The president is not above the law.”

Haaland is one of a growing number of House Democrats who support the inquiry. And it’s the first step of the impeachment proceedings.

There are two ways to start impeachment, according to the U.S. House of Representatives Archives. One is introducing a bill. Two is the House can initiate an impeachment by passing a resolution to authorize an inquiry.

The Associated Press completed a tally last month and it showed that “nearly half” of the Democrats in the House support the inquiry, 114 out of 235. That includes one Republican who turned Independent, Michigan Rep. Justin Amash.

A count by CNN said there are at least 122 Democrats in the House who support the inquiry.

However, even with those numbers Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, is the one who needs to push the process forward and she has been reluctant to do so.

Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Massachusetts, told the AP last month that opening up an impeachment inquiry “will provide us a more formal way to uncover the facts.”

Two presidents have been impeached: Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998, according to the U.S. House of Representatives Archives. Neither were convicted by the Senate after a trial. In an impeachment trial, the House would act as prosecutors, and the Senate would weigh the evidence, with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court acting as the judge. Two-thirds of the Senate would have to vote for a conviction to remove the president from office.

Jourdan Bennett-Begaye, Diné, is the Washington editor for Indian Country Today based in Washington, D.C. Follow her on Twitter: @jourdanbb. Email: jbennett-begaye@indiancountrytoday.com.