Congress ‘can’t impeach’ me, says Trump

WASHINGTON:President Donald Trump said on Monday that Congress "can’t impeach" him over the findings of the Mueller report into Russian election meddling and his attempts to hamper the investigation.

"Only high crimes and misdemeanors can lead to impeachment. There were no crimes by me (No Collusion, No Obstruction), so you can’t impeach," Trump stated on Twitter. "It was the Democrats that committed the crimes, not your Republican President! Tables are finally turning on the Witch Hunt!"

A redacted version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s approximately 450 page report was published last week after two years of intense investigations. It confirmed that Russian operatives had attempted to interfere in the 2016 election to help Trump beat Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, including by hacking into email accounts.

The report also found that Trump’s campaign took advantage of the impact on Clinton, but did not deliberately reach out to collude with the Russians. During the probe, Trump repeatedly tried to hamper Mueller’s work, the report said. Mueller said he could not rule one way or the other on whether Trump had committed the crime of obstruction of justice.

Democrats, who control the lower house of Congress, are so far mostly holding off from calling for impeachment proceedings. However, powerful House committees plan to dig further into the scandal and are pushing to be given the whole Mueller report, without parts currently blacked out for security or legal reasons.