Dems should immediately impeach Trump -- and it's got nothing to do with Russia: Dem lawyer

Attorney James Carroll has written an op-ed for USA Today that makes the case that House Democrats should move immediately to impeach President Donald Trump -- and he says they don't even need to prove Trump engaged in a conspiracy with Russian agents to do it.

At the start of his editorial, Carroll takes issue with Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi's strategy of waiting for special counsel Robert Mueller's final report before potentially initiating impeachment proceedings.

"Trump has committed innumerable impeachable offenses not involving Russia collusion, right out in public," he writes. "He continues daily to launch impeachment-worthy broadsides that are chipping away at the country’s democratic institutions and the rule of law."

Carroll then rattles off a laundry list of purportedly impeachable offenses that we already know Trump has committed, including "relentless obstruction of justice" and the "dangling of pardons for former campaign manager Paul Manafort and former personal lawyer Michael Cohen."

Carroll also thinks impeachment is worth pursuing even if it gets shot down by the Republican-controlled Senate.

"As incoming House Judiciary chairman Jerry Nadler said recently, even if Trump is not convicted, impeachment 'may in fact be necessary and successful at saying, in effect, you have violated the constitutional order, you are threatening the constitutional order, you will stop threatening the constitutional order. You will stop threatening the rule of law,'" he writes.

Read the whole editorial here.