State Dept Conspicuously Dodges Impeachment Question After Trump’s Iran Strikes

At Tuesday’s State Department press briefing, journalist Sam Husseini had a question about the constitutionality of Trump’s strikes on Iran and the possibility of impeachment.

Spokesperson Tammy Bruce, however, really, really did not want to let him ask it.

Watch:

Earlier that morning, amid mounting calls for impeachment, Trump had taken to Truth Social to rant about the subject:

He framed it as a partisan issue—focusing on the “Crooked and Corrupt Democrats” and some of his favorite targets like AOC and “Sleepy Joe”—while ignoring impeachment calls that don’t fit into that box.

For instance, Bruce Fein, whose statements we (and Sam Husseini) reported on last week:

Far from being a member of the “radical left” that Trump loves to hate, Fein is a constitutional scholar who worked for AEI, the Heritage Foundation, and the Reagan DOJ.

When Obama bombed Libya, Fein denounced him for it and drafted articles of impeachment. When Biden bombed Yemen, he Fein likewise made the case that he “should be impeached and removed from office.”

Another example: Justin Amash, who spent a decade in Congress (2011-2021), mostly as a Republican. (He became an independent in 2019.)

“There’s not a single plausible argument that Trump currently has the authority to launch offensive strikes against Iran,” Amash wrote last week.

”Any president who disregards the Constitution and sidesteps Congress to take America to war should be impeached and removed from office.”

In another post, Amash addressed those citing the War Powers Resolution to defend Trump’s actions, explaining why it’s “one of the most frequently misrepresented federal statutes—often falsely used to justify unconstitutional presidential war powers.”

When Biden bombed Yemen, Amash—like Fein—called it unconstitutional and said he should be impeached. Likewise for Obama. “We don’t impeach presidents often enough,” he wrote. “There’s not a single president in the modern era who shouldn’t have been impeached.”

“It’s useful for the Trump admin for impeachment calls to come from clear partisans like AOC,” said Sam Husseini on Thursday. “But they are deathly afraid of calls from people who say the same when Democratic presidents violate the constitution, as Biden did with Yemen and Obama did with Libya.”

“The duopoly loves to finger point so the war machine can roll on,” he added. “They are effectively logrolling. What they are afraid of is principled people standing up to the entire war-making apparatus.”

For more of Sam’s analysis, read “The Efficacy of Principled Impeachment” and his follow-up “The Imperative of Impeachment,” both published last week.