A former adviser to Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that Democrats have "completely botched" the impeachment process against President Donald Trump — slamming it as "impeachment-lite" — because he was not being held accountable for "crimes against humanity" from the illegal immigrant border crisis.
"It's a terrible disappointment and a failure, a complete moral failure, on the part of Democrats to give him a pass on everything except the Ukraine call," Peter Daou, a former adviser to former Secretaries of State Clinton and John Kerry, told Newsweek.
"Instead, we have this impeachment-lite at Christmas going into the election season — and it's going to have no effect on Trump whatsoever," Daou added. "The polls are showing that and he's getting a free pass on everything."
Democrats announced articles of impeachment Tuesday against Trump — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress — over his alleged Ukrainian actions, but Daou said that even if the House succeeded, "it is effectively an exoneration for Trump of every abuse he's ever committed."
Daou told Newsweek that, while the articles reflected serious claims, they barely approached the standards of high crimes and misdemeanors that Trump should be impeached for.
"I see impeachment as both a constitutional and a moral imperative," he said. "It's about holding a president to a bare basic minimum standard of moral decency."
Democrats should have pursued impeachment in January, Daou said, because of President Trump's "crimes against humanity at the border, with migrant children being tortured and ripped away from their families."
But party leaders have avoided the issue because illegals were caged during the Obama administration — "They don't want to open this can of worms," Daou said — and because many top Democrats are "quite comfortable with the status quo."
"They're raising tons of money off this," he said.
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