US Senator Elizabeth Warren has became the first 2020 Democratic presidential candidate to make a full-throated call for President Donald Trump to be impeached following the release of special counsel Robert Mueller's redacted report.
Mueller, who investigated whether Trump's campaign coordinated with Russia during the 2016 election and whether the president tried to interfere with the inquiry, found no evidence of a conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign and made no verdict on obstruction of justice.
Mueller did find, however, that Trump made numerous attempts to interfere with the investigation but was largely foiled by those around him.
In a series of tweets on Friday, Warren said it would be damaging to "ignore a President's repeated efforts to obstruct an investigation into his own disloyal behavior" and would give license to future presidents to act in the same way.
"The severity of this misconduct demands that elected officials in both parties set aside political considerations and do their constitutional duty.
"That means the House should initiate impeachment proceedings against the President of the United States," Warren, a senator from Massachusetts, tweeted.
Other 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, while supportive of the idea of impeachment, were more circumspect in their responses.
Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro said on CNN that it would be "perfectly reasonable for Congress to open up those proceedings".
Both Washington Governor Jay Inslee and congressman Eric Swalwell said the question of impeachment should not be taken off the table.
Other Democratic candidates, including senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, indicated it was too soon to initiate impeachment proceedings.
"We don't have an unredacted version of the report. We don't have the underlying materials that that report was written upon. We haven't had yet an opportunity to have hearings where we interview Mueller," Booker said during a campaign stop in Nevada.
Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, said the best recourse for Trump's actions as president would be to vote him out.
"If we really want to send Trumpism into the history books, the best thing we can do is defeat it decisively at the ballot box in 2020," Buttigieg said on NBC's Late Night with Seth Meyers.
Under the US Constitution, impeachment proceedings begin in the US House of Representatives, which is controlled by Democrats.
But if a case is brought it is decided in the US Senate, which Republicans control.
Australian Associated Press
