Over the weekend, Justin Amash, a young, libertarian-leaning, Michigan Republican who represents Grand Rapids and its suburbs, did what Democratic leaders have declined to do for the past two years: He thoughtfully laid out the case for impeaching Donald Trump. And he did it based primarily on a close reading of the publicly available, redacted version of the Mueller report.

Here are my principal conclusions:

1. Attorney General Barr has deliberately misrepresented Mueller’s report.

2. President Trump has engaged in impeachable conduct.

3. Partisanship has eroded our system of checks and balances.

4. Few members of Congress have read the report. — Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 18, 2019

It was a brave thing for Amash to do. He became the first Republican to endorse impeachment, and in so doing earned himself (almost instantly) a primary challenger and a couple of derogatory tweets from the president. But for Democrats, Amash’s comments should be embarrassing. A libertarian—and member of the rabidly pro-Trump Freedom Caucus—shouldn’t have a stronger argument for holding the president accountable than the leadership of the Democratic Party. But Amash does, and his forceful public statements on impeachment are a noticeable contrast with the squishy and condescending ones emanating from House Democratic leadership.

In particular, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has kept her caucus on a tight leash when it comes to Trump administration oversight. She’s endorsed an arguably cautious, but effectively slow-as-molasses approach, all the while discounting presidential impeachment as an activist’s pipe dream, one that will only distract from a general election still eighteen months away.

“We’re going to do the right thing,” Pelosi said earlier this month.” That’s just the way it is, and it is going to be based on fact and law and patriotism, not partisanship or anything else.” It was if leadership needed the president to do something so heinous they’d have no choice but to impeach. Which begs the question, how heinous is heinous enough? Still, through last week, it seemed that most of her caucus was in line with that approach. Now, in the wake of Amash’s decision to break with his party, Democrats are finally starting to break formation.



When Pelosi retook the speaker’s gavel in January—after a midterm blue wave built on a strong national distaste for Trump’s GOP—there was much speculation about how she would deal with the fissures that have appeared in the Democratic Party over recent years. At the time, these were mainly questions on policy, about how she would hold together a group of Democrats with very different ideas on, for instance, the party’s approach to expanding access to health care. But now, nearly five months into this session of Congress, the biggest debate is over the question of impeachment. Pelosi and her allies are publicly standing firm against it, but a growing number of Democrats, including members of her own leadership team, are pushing for bolder action. Monday’s closed-door meeting grew tense, according to reports in Politico:

