Watch Veronica Escobar Make the Case for Impeaching Trump

With a simple analogy, the representative from Texas takes down Republicans’ argument that Trump committed no wrongdoing.

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While the House Judiciary Committee debated the articles of impeachment drawn up against President Donald Trump, Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) used a simple analogy to make the case that the president had committed a crime.

“If a community suffers a natural disaster, and the governor of the state has aid that will help that community, but calls the mayor of your community and says, ‘I want you to do me a favor, though,’ and conditions giving the aid to the community on the police chief smearing his political opponent, has there been a crime?” Escobar said this morning. “The answer is yes. And that governor would go to jail.”

The governor would go to jail, Escobar said, even if he released the aid after he got caught. Escobar also pointed out that this hypothetical governor also would have committed a crime if he defied subpoenas and tried to cover up his wrongdoing.

“Our Republican colleagues are working overtime to try to convince us that we didn’t see what we saw with our own eyes and we didn’t hear what we heard with our own ears,” she said. “Facts matter.”

Watch Escobar’s full statement below:

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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