WASHINGTON — Even after President Trump sued him last month to keep his business records secret, Representative Elijah E. Cummings kept his cool and urged Congress to move slowly on impeachment. But as Mr. Trump ratchets up his campaign to block Democrats’ access to documents and witnesses, the ordinarily careful Democrat is, like the rest of his caucus, growing impatient. “It sounds like he’s asking us to impeach him,” Mr. Cummings, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform and a top lieutenant to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said in an interview last week. Increasingly, though, their strategy of holding impeachment-like hearings without declaring a formal impeachment process is looking like a dead end. Mr. Cummings views the Trump presidency, and the White House effort to block multiple lines of inquiry, as “far worse than Watergate.” He sees a “constitutional crisis” that even the founding fathers did not envision when they created the system of checks and balances that has kept American democracy intact.

Source: New York Times May 08, 2019 09:02 UTC