WASHINGTON — Beto O’Rourke now explicitly supports impeaching Donald Trump — a stance he had avoided since launching his own campaign for president.

"We're finally learning the truth about this president. And yes, there has to be consequences. Yes, there has to be accountability. Yes, I think there's enough evidence now for the House of Representatives to move forward with impeachment," he said in an interview with The Dallas Morning News. "This is our country, and this is the one chance that we get to ensure that it remains a democracy and that no man, regardless of his position, is above the law."

The direct call for impeachment was a shift for the El Paso Democrat, who has long favored impeachment but had refrained from advocating for it or even mentioning it unprompted, as he did Friday.

Twice as a member of the House, O'Rourke voted against opening impeachment proceedings.

As recently as two weeks ago, after the Justice Department released a redacted version of the Mueller report, O’Rourke was still treading lightly on the idea, insisting that it wasn’t his place as a presidential candidate even to weigh in.

“I'm going to leave that to those members of the House who as they review those findings can make that decision. ... But ultimately at this point I believe that this is going to be decided in November 2020," he told reporters in New Hampshire.

He now joins a handful of Democratic White House contenders calling outright for Trump’s impeachment.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren was the first to issue that demand, the day the Mueller report went to Congress. Sen. Kamala Harris echoed the call four days later. Former housing secretary Julián Castro called impeachment a reasonable response to the report.

Mueller and his team cleared Trump of working with Russia to win the 2016 election. Attorney General William Barr asserted that Mueller also found insufficient evidence to charge Trump with obstruction of justice, though Mueller disputes that, and sent his boss a scathing and extraordinary letter taking issue with the claim.

A wave of Democratic candidates for the White House have demanded Barr’s resignation in recent days, including O’Rourke.

The chorus to impeach Trump is smaller. Many Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, fear political backlash that could kill the party's chances in the 2020 elections.

It’s a topic that has bedeviled O’Rourke.

In his failed bid last year to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz, he was the only Senate nominee in the country to openly favor impeachment, though he always approached the topic cautiously, and never broached it on the stump or in interviews — until now.

On Friday, he invoked impeachment in response to an open-ended question about his views on the Mueller investigation that made no mention of impeachment.

"Republicans say people don't care about the Mueller investigation, that it's a closed deal. When they go to their districts, or people they represent, that's not what they're hearing. What about you?" asked The News' Gromer Jeffers Jr. during an O'Rourke campaign stop in Fort Worth on Friday. "How do you feel about the Mueller investigation and what should happen next?"

After averring that voters are focused on health care, education and job security, O’Rourke pivoted quickly, arguing that Trump has put American democracy at risk.

Trump should face impeachment, he said, because he “welcomed the participation of a foreign power into our election, that sought to sway that election in his favor” and “clearly obstructed justice in firing the principal investigator” and prodding his attorney general to quash the investigation. Through “lying and dissembling and creating such a climate of fear within the White House and government ... he almost got away with it,” O’Rourke said.

Impeachment is a formal accusation by the House followed by trial in the Senate, where conviction means removal from office.

In April, July and October of last year, O'Rourke said he was ready to vote for impeachment. Cruz called him a "partisan extremist" so intent on driving Trump from office that he would risk a political "circus."

Last July, after Trump defended Russian strongman Vladimir Putin at a summit in Helsinki against allegations that Russia had meddled in the 2016 election, O'Rourke responded to a question from The News by saying:

“Standing on stage in another country with the leader of another country who wants to and has sought to undermine this country, and to side with him over the United States — if I were asked to vote on this, I would vote to impeach the president,” he said.

But at the outset of his presidential campaign in mid-March, O’Rourke distanced himself from the idea.

"I wasn't out there calling for it,” he said in Iowa on the second day of his campaign, arguing that while he was sure Trump had committed offenses that justify impeachment, “I'm not asking Congress to do one thing or the other.”

Both times O'Rourke had a chance to vote for impeachment, he voted against it: on Dec. 6, 2017, when the House voted 364-58 to kill an impeachment resolution from Rep. Al Green, a Houston Democrat, and on Jan. 19, 2018, when the House voted 355-66 to kill another try from Green.

Green is continuing to push for impeachment. O’Rourke left the House in January after three terms.

Todd J. Gillman reported from Washington. Gromer Jeffers Jr. reported from Fort Worth.