While Democrats in the House certainly aren’t lining up behind Trump, they also aren’t lining up against him. Impeachment efforts in the House have been relegated to a few Democrats on a quixotic mission, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has effectively pumped the brakes on all the talk.
Special counsel Robert Mueller declined to make a prosecutorial judgment on Trump and multiple examples of his potential obstruction of justice. But the Mueller report includes a whole section on Congress protecting “the integrity of its own proceedings, grand jury investigations, and federal criminal trials.”
Mueller seemed to be prodding Congress toward impeachment: “We concluded that Congress can validly regulate the president’s exercise of official duties to prohibit actions motivated by a corrupt intent to obstruct justice,” the report said.
Instead of impeachment, however, congressional Democrats mostly met the report with yet another round of carefully worded press releases calling for more investigation.
The problem with that position is that the Trump administration is barely cooperating with those investigations.
Trump himself said he would ignore every subpoena related to oversight of his administration. In defiance of the law, the Treasury Department refuses to turn over his tax returns. Members of his administration routinely don’t show up to testify before the House ― Attorney General William Barr turned down his scheduled appearance last week, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross passed on his invitation to speak before the Appropriations Committee.
Trump is even suing his own banks to block them from turning over his financial statements.