Green rebukes the president’s tweet comparing impeachment to ‘lynching’

WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Al Green was practically shouting on the House floor Tuesday morning, admitting as he rose to speak that tears were welling in his eyes after President Donald Trump called House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry a “lynching.”

“Does he not know the history of lynching in this country?” the Houston Democrat said. “Does he not know that thousands of African Americans were lynched? ... Does he not know that this is the equivalent of murder?”

The backlash to Trump’s tweet on Tuesday calling the impeachment inquiry “a lynching” was swift, with Democrats, civil rights activists and historians expressing shock that the president would compare the impeachment inquiry to racial violence that led to the deaths of nearly 4,743 people, including nearly 500 in Texas alone.

To Green, it was just the latest addition to a long list of the president’s wrongs — a list that already includes everything from spouting rhetoric echoed by the gunman who killed 22 at an El Paso Walmart to the president’s verbal attacks on four congresswomen of color. Green, the House’s longest and most persistent proponent of impeachment, first forced a vote on the matter in 2017.

When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the House’s inquiry last month, Green said he felt “vindicated.” But he’s mostly advocated impeachment along a different path than the one Democrats are pursuing now.

As House Democrats’ impeachment probe continues behind closed doors, with party leaders saying they plan to stick with a narrow inquiry focused on the Ukraine scandal, Green — who has three times tried to impeach Trump — says he doesn’t want them to forget the president’s repeated public attempts to stoke racial animus.

“The president has committed many impeachable offenses,” Green said. “The question is how many of them will we call to the attention of the Senate.”

Since his first attempt to impeach Trump in 2017, Green has been honing his message, increasingly focusing on articles of impeachment against another president more than 150 years ago as a road map: That of Andrew Johnson, the root cause of which, Green says, “was bigotry.”

Johnson served in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War and clashed repeatedly with a Republican Congress during Reconstruction, vetoing legislation aimed at protecting and expanding rights of freed slaves. He was acquitted by the Senate in 1868, but nonetheless accused by the House of “a high misdemeanor in office.” The articles of impeachment the House passed pointed to Johnson’s “utterances, declarations, threats, and harangues” that brought the “office of the President of the United States into contempt, ridicule, and disgrace, to the great scandal of all good citizens.”

Green says Trump has committed those same high crimes and misdemeanors.

“When the framers gave us high crimes and misdemeanors, they meant doing bad things that are harmful to society,” Green said. “There is no law that he has to break.”

Whether many others on the Hill will buy Green’s approach is another matter — especially as Democrats make progress on their inquiry into Trump’s attempts to pressure Ukraine into investigating political rival Joe Biden.

William Taylor Jr., the United States’ top diplomat in Ukraine, told impeachment investigators privately on Tuesday that Trump held up security aid for the country and refused a White House meeting with Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, until he agreed to investigate Biden. Democrats in attendance called it the most damaging account yet for the president, as Taylor provided an “excruciatingly detailed” opening statement that described the quid-pro-quo pressure campaign that Trump and his allies have been denying.

Still, Trump’s “lynching” comment drew derision throughout the day and forced Republicans in Congress to once again respond to inflammatory remarks by a president facing impeachment.

“It’s beyond shameful to use the word ‘lynching’ to describe being held accountable for your actions,” former San Antonio Mayor and Democratic presidential hopeful Julián Castro tweeted.

“You think this impeachment is a LYNCHING? What the hell is wrong with you?” tweeted U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, a Democrat from Illinois. “Do you know how many people who look like me have been lynched, since the inception of this country, by people who look like you. Delete this tweet.”

“Mr. Trump’s actions & words are consistent w/ those who incited lynching, not its victims,” tweeted Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund who said she’s “studied lynching for decades.”

“And that fact makes this tweet particularly grotesque,” she said.

Some Republicans in Congress balked at the president’s word choice.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called it “unfortunate” and said “given the history in our country, I would not compare this to a lynching.” Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, tweeted: “‘Lynching’ brings back images of a terrible time in our nation’s history, and the President never should have made that comparison.”

The Texans in the Senate were less fazed.

Sen. Ted Cruz — who previously compared House Democrats to a “lynch mob” — “agrees that the sentiment the president is conveying is that a political mob is seeking an outcome regardless of the facts, which is what is happening in the House right now,” aspokeswoman said.

Sen. John Cornyn told reporters that “obviously that’s hyperbole and some people might find it offensive.”

Asked if he found it offensive, Cornyn responded: “I’ve got a pretty high threshold when it comes to being offended around here. Otherwise it would be all day, every day.”

This report contains material from the New York Times. ben.wermund@chron.com