Hillary Clinton has weighed in on the Mueller report and the prospect of impeachment proceedings against her 2016 opponent Donald Trump.
In an opinion piece in The Washington Post on Wednesday, Clinton said Congress should hold hearings to “build on the Mueller report and fill in its gaps.”
“Not jump straight to an up-or-down vote on impeachment,” she said.
Clinton acknowledged that the debate over what happens next is “personal” for her, given that her presidential campaign was targeted by Russian hackers, but said her perspective is informed by more than that.
“I am also a former senator and secretary of state who served during much of Vladimir Putin’s ascent, sat across the table from him and knows firsthand that he seeks to weaken our country,” she wrote.
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s 22-month investigation did not establish a criminal conspiracy between Trump’s campaign and Russia to influence the presidential outcome but revealed that Trump tried to seize control of the Russia investigation.
WATCH: Kamala Harris becomes latest voice to call for Trump’s impeachment after Mueller report
In the report, released last week, Mueller laid out multiple episodes in which Trump directed other people to influence or curtail the investigation after the special counsel’s 2017 appointment, but he said those efforts “were mostly unsuccessful,” largely because “the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.”
Clinton said the Mueller report “documents a serious crime against the American people” and that the issues go beyond partisanship.
“Mueller’s report leaves many unanswered questions — in part because of Attorney General William P. Barr’s redactions and obfuscations,” she wrote.
“But it is a road map. It’s up to members of both parties to see where that road map leads — to the eventual filing of articles of impeachment, or not.”
WATCH: Trump says White House is fighting ‘all’ House subpoenas
Her comments were published on the same day that Trump declared he and his administration will battle House Democrats on all legal fronts in the wake of the special counsel’s Russia report, refusing to co-operate with subpoenas and appealing to the Supreme Court if Congress tries to impeach him.
Trump said he “thought after two years we’d be finished with it.”
“I say it’s enough,” Trump told reporters on the White House’s lawn, accusing the Democrats of using investigations for their electoral advantage in 2020.
–With files from the Associated Press
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