House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., said Thursday that President Donald Trump’s attempts to obstruct the Russia investigation and his administration’s blocking Democratic inquiries is “bigger than Watergate.”
“I would define it as a confrontational crisis,” Clyburn said in an interview on MSNBC. “That is exactly what it is. How is that for hair-splitting? The fact of the matter is we are in a crisis. You have such divisions between the executive and legislative and looking for the judiciary to step in and moderate or navigate — help us navigate through this. That is a crisis situation. It may not be as big as a lot of the crises that we have had as a nation, but this is bigger than Watergate was.”
Democrats have focused on 10 incidents, or “episodes,” cited in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report that may detail Trump’s attempts at obstruction. Since the report’s release, House committee chairs have launched several investigations into Trump’s actions during the Mueller investigation.
Clyburn continued, “All you’ve got to do is look at this report, and you know that, but for his status as president of the United States, this president would have been indicted for obstruction of justice, and there are 10 or 12 different instances in the Mueller report that indicate that. And so that to me is a crisis situation. I’ve studied history. I’ve taught history. I spent a lot of time researching history every day. Never has a country been in the place it has been today.”