A majority of House Democrats are now calling for beginning an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, increasing pressure on Speaker Nancy Pelosi after California Rep. Salud Carbajal on Friday pushed the party past the halfway mark.
Carbajal, a two-term member from Pelosi's home state, said in a statement Friday that Trump "evaded truth, encouraged his staff to lie repeatedly to investigators and engaged in obstruction," adding "that's criminal."
"If anyone else did these things, they would face legal consequences," Carbajal said.
According to NBC News, 118 of the 235 Democrats in the House have publicly called for an impeachment inquiry. Since former Russia special counsel Robert Mueller's congressional testimony last week, more than two dozen Democrats called for proceedings.
However, Pelosi has resisted the calls, instead urging party members to remain steadfast in the continuing Hill investigations and legal skirmishes.
"We will proceed when we have what we need to proceed — not one day sooner," Pelosi said last week at her final weekly news conference before the start of the August recess.
House members can "espouse their own position" on impeachment and are welcome to criticize her position, Pelosi said, but she reiterated that party members should "legislate, investigate and litigate," NBC reports.
In addition, 11 committee chairs, including two leading probes into the Trump White House — House Financial Services Chair Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel, D-N.Y. — have backed impeachment.
But House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., whose panel has jurisdiction over impeachment, has openly expressed reservations about the move.
"We may not do that, we may do that, but that's a conclusion at the end of the process," Nadler said last week.
However, the Judiciary Committee on Friday requested grand jury material from Mueller's probe in a federal court filing and said publicly for the first time that it was investigating whether to proceed with impeachment.
The court is not expected to rule on the committee's request for at least two months, NBC reports.
"What's going on is that I think too much has been made of the phrase 'an impeachment inquiry,'" Nadler told reporters Friday.
"We are doing what our court filing says we are doing, what I said we are doing — and that is to say we are using our full Article I powers to investigate the conduct of the president, and to consider what remedies there are," he said.
Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Mass., the vice chair of the House Democratic Caucus, last week broke with leadership and called for impeachment proceedings.
"I deeply respect the committee work of House Democrats to hold the president accountable, including hearings, subpoenas and lawsuits," Clark, the No. 6 House Democrat, said last week after Mueller's testimony.
"All of our efforts to put the facts before the American people, however, have been met with unprecedented stonewalling and obstruction," she added. "That is why I believe we need to open an impeachment inquiry that will provide us a more formal way to fully uncover the facts."
Last month, the House voted to kill a resolution by Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, to proceed with impeachment, citing President Trump statements about four freshmen Democratic congresswomen of color.
Only 95 Democrats supported the measure, NBC reports.
In addition, Rep. Justin Amash, a Michigan Republican who turned independent last month, has called for impeachment.
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