Tulsi Gabbard says she 'unfortunately' now supports an impeachment inquiry

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) says she now supports an impeachment inquiry days after dismissing it as too divisive.

The 2020 Democratic candidate announced Friday her support of a "swift" and "narrowly-focused" impeachment inquiry into President Trump, saying this comes after she looked "carefully" at the transcript of Trump's conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, as well as the whistleblower complaint it sparked, the inspector general memo, and Trump's "comments about the issue."

Gabbard throughout her campaign had been taking the opposite position, arguing in a CNN interview days ago that impeachment would be "terribly divisive." She did not change her mind following the release of the rough transcript of Trump's conversation with Zelensky showing he pushed for an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden's son, saying in an Wednesday interview with The Hill, "Most people reading through that transcript are not going to find that extremely compelling cause to throw out a president that won an election in 2016."

In her statement, Gabbard notes this earlier resistance but says she "unfortunately" now supports an inquiry because "if we allow the president to abuse his or her power, then our society will rot from top to bottom." She adds, however, she hopes the inquiry will not descend into a "long, protracted partisan circus that will further divide out country and undermine our democracy."

Gabbard was among the final Democrats in the House to not publicly take this position, with NBC News reporting 226 members of Congress now back an impeachment inquiry.