Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez says he was underwhelmed with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s press conference Wednesday morning.
“There wasn’t a lot said,” Perez said Wednesday during an interview with Boston Public Radio. “I thought it was notable that he reiterated what we heard before.”
During Mueller’s short press conference, the special counsel said that his office’s report about Russian interference in the 2016 election “speaks for itself,” and that he has no intention of speaking publicly on the matter in the future.
What stuck out to Perez the most, however, was that there was little mention of the Russian government’s efforts to hack into the DNC and tilt the 2016 presidential election in favor of President Trump. Though this was stated in the special counsel's report, Perez said he was surprised that the issue was not a more prominent part of Mueller's remarks.
“What he was cryptic about today, that he wasn’t cryptic about before, is that there was Russian interference in the 2016 election. It was designed to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump,” Perez said. “That has been made clear in prior indictments. I don’t know why today he was referring to a 'candidate.' He has [used Trump’s name] before.”
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Perez reiterated his belief that Trump is compromised by the Russian government. He expressed a lack of faith in both Trump and the federal government to secure the nation’s electoral process from interference in the future.
“We are at war right now with the Russians — it is a cyber war — [and] our commander-in-chief is compromised,” Perez said. “We should be able to rely on the federal government for help from this. ... It is unconscionable that this administration has paid such little attention to what Mueller acknowledged today, [which is] Russian interference. ”
As for impeaching the president, the DNC chair said he agrees with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. As a former prosecutor for the Department of Justice, Perez believes that before an indictment can be made it’s important to gather all of the evidence at hand, something he says has been impossible due to repeated efforts from the Trump administration.
“I was trained with the ethic that you have to investigate and gather all the facts before you make judgments,” Perez said. “There are a lot of unanswered questions here, and I absolutely support Speaker Pelosi’s efforts to make sure we are methodically gathering the facts, and it’s hard to gather the facts when you’re getting stonewalled.”
He cited the formal request that Massachusetts Rep. Richard Neal, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, has filed with the Internal Revenue Service for Trump’s tax returns, as a good example of how to go about investigating the president.
“Richie Neal for Massachusetts ... is doing a bang up job as chair of the House Ways and Means Committee,” Perez said. “His methodical nature will serve him well, and serve the cause of justice well, in the courts.”
Despite accusations by Trump and his allies that Democrats are engaging in a “witch hunt,” Perez says it’s critical to the nation’s democracy to investigate the president.
He adds that, given Attorney General William Barr’s previous defenses of the president, he’s lost his credibility, leaving it to congressional Democrats to pick up the job.
“People ask the question, 'Why don’t you just move on?' We can’t move on,” Perez said. “We have a constitutional obligation to continue to gather the facts and answer so many questions that are, frankly, unanswered.”
