On impeachment, Lindsey Graham says you can't compare Trump to Bill Clinton, as Trump 'did nothing wrong'

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published 29 April 2019

With all this talk of impeachment going on, people have been playing close attention to something Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said in January 1999.

After independent counsel Kenneth Starr released his report stating that President Bill Clinton lied during a deposition about his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, Graham stood on the Senate floor and declared: "You don't even have to be convicted of a crime to lose your job in this constitutional republic if this body determines your conduct as a public official is clearly out of bounds in your role." Impeachment, he said, is "not about punishment. Impeachment is about cleansing the office. Impeachment is about restoring honor and integrity to the office."

On CBS's Face the Nation Sunday, Graham said there is nothing about President Trump in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report that can compare to Clinton. "What President Clinton did was interfere in a lawsuit against him by Paula Jones and others, hide the evidence, encouraged people to lie," he said. "So, to me, he took the legal system and turned it upside down. But it doesn't have to technically be a crime. What President Trump did here was completely cooperate in an investigation, a million documents, let everybody that the special counsel wanted to talk to be interviewed."

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The report, which details several incidents in which Trump may have obstructed justice, states that in 2017, Trump told former White House Counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller. That means nothing to Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "I don't care what they talked about," he said. "He didn't do anything. The point is the president did not impede Mueller from doing his investigation." Watch the interview below. Catherine Garcia

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.