Democratic California Rep. Maxine Waters had difficulty explaining why she thinks Donald Trump’s campaign attacks against Hillary Clinton are impeachable offenses while being interviewed by MSNBC’s Chris Matthews Monday night.

Waters, who will join Georgia Rep. John Lewis in boycotting Trump’s inauguration on Friday, first ran into difficulty when Matthews asked why some Democrats still view Trump as “illegitimate.”

WATCH:

“If there’s some sort of — as you call it — collusion,” the “Hardball” host noted. “Then what? Does that make Trump subject to impeachment? Just generally, tell me what you mean by the term.”

“Well here’s what I’m trying to get to,” Waters responded. “If we discover that Donald Trump or his advocates played a role to help provide strategy — if they’re the ones who came up with ‘Crooked Hillary,’ if they’re the ones who came up with, ‘she’s ill, something’s wrong with her energy,’ and the way that he basically described her during the campaign — I think that is something that would put the question squarely on the table whether or not he should be impeached.”

“So, you think you can commit an impeachable offense before you take office?” Matthews incredulously asked the California Democrat.

“Well, I think that at the point that investigations discover and confirm and can document any of that role in helping to strategize — they had a role in attempting to determine the outcome,” she answered regardless of the actual question. “That in many ways they used the information they got when they hacked into emails etc. — if that was used against Hillary Clinton in some way, yes I think that’s impeachable.”

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