Today Chuck Schumer did an interview on the Upstate New York NPR radio station (WAMC) with host Alan Chartock. They discussed many topics, but what was most interesting to me were Schumer’s comments on impeachment. You can listen to the whole interview HERE for free. If you are just interested in the impeachment dialogue, it starts about 14:40 minutes in.
But if you trust my bold attempt at transcription, you can read what was said below:
Chartock – Ok, very quickly, Nancy Pelosi has announced, your partner as you say in all of this, has announced there should not be an impeachment effort yet, I happen to agree with that, I think she is 100% right. I get an awful lot of garbage from my fellow Democrats…
Schumer – They have some legitimate objections I suppose, not just garbage, even if you don’t agree.
Chartock – You think so?
Schumer – I don’t know.
Chartock – Ok, so let’s assume that that’s the case, um, is she right?
Schumer – My view is very simple. What I’ve said all along and I will say to you now, we should wait for Mueller. We shouldn’t pre-judge. We should wait for Mueller, and I think that’s what Speaker Pelosi was saying as well. In other words, let’s wait and read the whole report. Now she set up some conditions that the report would have to meet. But I’m not setting up any conditions at this point. All I’m saying is let’s see what the Mueller report has. The one thing I do say is no one should interfere with how it is issued and no one should stop it from being made public.
Chartock – Will you get it?
Schumer – I think we will get it sooner or later.
Chartock – How do you do that?
Schumer – Well if Barr, the Attorney General, I did not support…I called Barr into my office and said give me a commitment that you’ll make the whole report, other than redactions to protect intelligence sources, public and he wouldn’t. So, I said than I cannot vote for you. So, I’m not sure he will, he’s waffled, you know he thinks it should, he believes in transparency. That’s not good enough, to just say that. But I think if the, if we go to court, we’ll win. Remember, that’s what happened, in the last big precedent for that was with Nixon, and he wouldn’t turn over the tapes.
Chartock – But there were tapes.
Schumer – And there were tapes and he wouldn’t turn them over, and, like there’s a report, and the day before they told him the Supreme Court gonna decide against you 9 to nothing, and he turned them over and there was the gap and that was that.
Now if you look at what I bolded above, it sounds like Schumer is a little to the left of Pelosi on the Impeachment question. In a nutshell, Pelosi has set up the conditions of needing overwhelming evidence of serious crimes and Bipartisan agreement to proceed with impeachment. However, I hear Schumer saying he is not setting any such pre-conditions.
Small difference, I agree. But does sound like there is a little bit of daylight between how Pelosi and Schumer feel about impeachment.
What do you all think?