RPT - Coming Months Will Be Crucial In Dem Battle Over Trump Impeachment - Ex-White House Aide

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 25th May, 2019) The upcoming summer months will be pivotal in the Democratic Party's internal quarrel over whether to launch impeachment proceedings against US President Donald Trump, former White House National Security Council senior staff member Henry Nau told Sputnik.

Trump in a twitter post on Friday said the Democrats are unhappy with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's "No Collusion" report and want a second chance. The comment comes a day after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Trump's attempts to hinder congressional probes could amount to impeachable offenses.

"There's this battle going on inside the Democratic Party, and I think in the media, to see whether or not the middle is ready to accept impeachment... I think the next four or five months are going to be very decisive," Nau, who is also a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, said.

Meanwhile, Nau said, the Democrats are waiting to see how their effort to "redo" the Mueller investigation will play out. If the moderates in the party are ready to accept impeachment proceedings the Democrats will move forward because it could have a significant effect on the 2020 election, he added.

The former White House official also said Trump, for his part, must appeal to the middle.

"Trump must try to convince the moderate middle that this is just a witch hunt, and it's going off the rails. Democrats don't want to legislate. They don't want to govern. They just want revenge. They want revenge for 2016. If he were to go into the middle with that kind of a message, I think he would succeed because the Mueller report was pretty clear," Nau said.

Trump has resisted several House subpoenas for records and testimonies, arguing that it is unnecessary given Mueller's report found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.

However, the Mueller report described 10 episodes that may constitute obstruction of justice by the US president, a fact the Democrats have exploited to justify more investigations. When the report was released in April, Attorney General William Barr said the evidence in the Mueller report did not rise to the level of a crime.

Russia has repeatedly denied any claims of interference in the US political system, saying the allegations were made up to excuse the election loss of Trump's 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton as well as deflect public attention from actual instances of election fraud and corruption.

Nau served on US President Ronald Reagan's National Security Council from January 1981 to August 1983.