Lone GOP Trump impeachment advocate Justin Amash tells town hall some GOP colleagues secretly agree

Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) held his first public appearance Tuesday night since arguing on Twitter that President Trump has committed clearly impeachable offenses, based on his close reading of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report. The hundreds of constituents who gathered to hear Amash at a two-hour town hall at Grand Rapids Christian High School gave him several standing ovations as he laid out the case for impeaching Trump he continues to make on Twitter. Amash, a 39-year-old lawyer first elected to Congress in 2010, started by explaining what impeachment is and isn't.

Amash, whose district voted for Trump in 2016, shrugged off the blowback he's getting from his fellow Republicans over his impeachment comments. Every member of Congress "has a duty to keep the president in check," and "I'd do it whether it was a Republican president or a Democratic president," he said. "You elected me to represent all of you."

The criticism of his comments from "so-called" House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is indicative of "the kind of 'leadership' we now have in Congress," Amash said. "I read the Mueller report, I'm sure he did not read it. I stated what it actually says, and he resorted to ad hominem attacks." He added he thinks House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) doesn't support impeachment because she's "concerned with her members in tougher districts" and "with protecting her majority." But "a lot of people think I'm right about the Mueller report," he said. "They just won't say it. A lot of Republicans."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

"Over the evening, as it became clear that most of the audience supported his impeachment stance, Amash sought out critical questions," The Washington Post reports. One Trump supporter asked Amash, eventually, why "he's become a Democrat." Amash said he hasn't. Republicans under Trump no longer care "about limited government," he said. "But I haven't changed. I'm who I said I was. I'm a principled, constitutional conservative." Peter Weber