U.S. Rep. Jason Crow said Sunday that he will vote to impeach President Donald Trump this week for both abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

The freshman Democrat from Aurora told a crowd of several hundred people at a town hall meeting there that he did not go to Congress to impeach a president but that Trump’s actions toward Ukraine, and his obstruction of Congress, require Crow to vote yes.

“We are a system built on rule of law and no man or woman is above or below those laws,” said Crow, a former lawyer, as he told the story of a man he met while on a combat tour in Iraq.

The man sought help from the U.S. military in settling a dispute with his neighbor, knowing the Iraqi justice system was too corrupt to hand down a fair and honest ruling. The moral of the story, in Crow’s telling, is the fragility of American institutions and the dire need to uphold them.

Crow called the Trump administration “unprecedented” in its obstruction of Congress, a threat to the American government’s constitutional system of checks and balances.

“We do not have kings or queens here, we have the people’s house, that is accountable to the people,” he said of Congress. “It can only be accountable to the people if Congress stands up and asserts that power, asserts that influence, to make sure that those coequal branches exist.”

“That is why, when the votes are cast this week, I will be left with no other option than to vote for articles of impeachment,” Crow said, the last syllable of his remarks drowned out by loud cheers from the friendly crowd, which gave him a 20-second-long standing ovation.

Before Sunday, Crow was the only U.S. House member from Colorado to not say how he would vote on impeachment. With his support, the Colorado delegation will vote strictly along party lines, with all Democrats in favor and all Republicans in opposition.

Crow’s support is noteworthy because he represents the 6th Congressional District in the eastern Denver suburbs, a district that had never elected a Democrat before it elected Crow in 2018. Republicans have targeted the seat in 2020 and been quick to criticize Crow on impeachment.

“There is an election in less than year, and Jason Crow needs to put politics aside and reject this sham impeachment of President Trump,” Kristi Burton Brown, vice president of the Colorado Republican Party, said last week. “If he does not stand up to (Speaker Nancy) Pelosi’s clear abuse of power, Colorado voters will hold Crow accountable at the ballot box.”

On Thursday, critics of Crow gathered outside his office and urged him to oppose impeachment, a protest organized by the Colorado Republican Party. But on Sunday, the congressman said the evidence against Trump was too overwhelming, making impeachment unfortunately necessary.

“I said at the outset that if the allegations against President Trump are true — that President Trump used his official power as president of the United States and withheld foreign security assistance funds from an ally that’s at war in Europe for his own personal benefit, for political gain — that that was an impeachable offense,” Crow told reporters after the town hall.

“It has become abundantly clear over the last couple of months, and as I’ve looked at the final evidence that came in in the last couple of weeks, that that’s what happened.”