WASHINGTON — Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said that President Donald Trump’s military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities were ‘illegal’ but dodged when asked if he should be impeached for ordering the attacks without congressional approval.
“That’s a decision the House makes. That’s not a decision that Senate makes. But it is clear that this is illegal,” Murphy said when asked whether he agreed with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s comments that Trump’s strikes were grounds for impeachment.
The House votes on whether to impeach a president, while the Senate votes on conviction.
A president can launch military attacks if there is a “declaration of war,” Congressional authorization or “a national emergency created by an attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, its armed forces,” according to the War Powers Resolution. Trump’s strikes, some Democrats argue, breach the resolution.
The Senate last week voted against a resolution that would have required Trump to seek congressional approval before authorizing any additional military action against Iran. The vote was almost entirely along party lines, with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., siding with Democrats.
Asked a second time by moderator Kristen Welker whether the New York Democrat was on the right track by suggesting impeachment, Murphy said that Trump’s conduct during his second term has been worse than his first.
“Again, that’s a decision the House makes. But I will say, I mean, if you compare his conduct in this administration to the conduct that he got impeached for in the first administration, his conduct in this administration is much worse, much more lawless and much more unconstitutional,” Murphy said.
Trump was impeached twice during his first term, though he was never convicted by the Senate. Democrats are in the minority in both the House and Senate, making any impeachment efforts unlikely to move forward.
Murphy has called Trump’s decision to strike Iran illegal because the president did not seek congressional authorization.
“I’ve been briefed on the intelligence — there is no evidence Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States. That makes this attack illegal,” Murphy said in a statement in the hours after the attack. He added that “only Congress can declare preemptive war.”
Trump has repeatedly insisted that the U.S. attacks “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities, while U.S. officials have also said that it would take weeks to fully understand the impact of the strikes.
An initial Defense Intelligence Agency assessment, which was leaked, said that the bombing may have only set back Iran’s nuclear program by several months. NBC News has reported that the DIA labeled its assessment “low confidence,” and several U.S. officials have said that intelligence indicated that the nuclear sites were heavily damaged or destroyed.
Murphy said on Sunday that Iran’s nuclear capability “just was not obliterated.”
He said if he were the commander-in-chief, he would not have authorized the strikes.
“No, I would not have authorized strikes literally at the moment that we were sitting down with the Iranians trying to come to a peaceful settlement,” Murphy said. “The only way that you are going to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon is an agreement.”
The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a CBS News interview released Sunday that Iran could resume enrichment within months.
“The capacities they have are there,” said Rafael Mariano Grossi, according to a transcript released ahead of the interview airing. “They can have, you know, in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium, or less than that. But as I said, frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing there.”
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