Los Angeles City Council just joined a growing number of American cities to pass a resolution pressing for an investigation into potentially impeachable offenses by President Donald Trump.
The L.A. resolution that passed 10 to 0 on Friday calls for “support for any legislative action” to investigate whether Trump has violated the Foreign Emoluments Clause of the Constitution. It also demands an investigation examine whether he has committed “any other high crime or misdemeanor sufficient to warrant commencement of impeachment proceedings.”
It’s “not about any of his policies that I and many of us here find completely odious,” said City Council member Bob Blumenfield (D-San Fernando Valley), a co-author of the resolution, in a speech before its passage. “This is about conflict of interest.”
Blumenfield said there are “key facts” about Trump that “should worry all Americans” and “should warrant intense investigation.” These include campaign and White House associates with ties to Turkey and Russia, and Trump’s continued business interests and apparent conflicts of interest that are “deeply troubling and potentially criminal,” he said.
It’s about “pressuring Congress to ensure that Trump only uses his presidency to benefit the American people” and not just grow his net worth, Blumenfield added. He ripped the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., where foreign dignitaries stay, and where everything is branded with the name of the president “from the top of the building down to the chocolate on the pillows.”
Blumenfield also lashed Trump for his recent White House invitation to Rodrigo Duterte, the murderous president of the Philippines, where a new Trump tower is about to open in Manila, which will earn the president “millions of dollars in licensing fees.”
“We must demand that Congress use its power to investigate,” said Blumenfield. “With this resolution, the city of Los Angeles calls on our Congress members and senators for the good of the country to investigate Trump’s international finances and make sure that he is actually working on behalf of the American people and not his own pocketbook.”
The West Valley Resistance organization, part of a national Impeach Trump Now campaign, spearheaded the Los Angeles push. Similar resolutions, based on language developed by the Impeach Trump group, have already been passed in eight cities, including Berkeley, Richmond and Alameda in California, and Charlotte, Vermont, and Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“Every day there’s a new ethical problem that warrants impeachment,” said Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguín, who co-sponsored his city’s resolution.
Read Blumenfield’s full statement below:
CORRECTION: This article previously misidentified Jesse Arreguín as the mayor of Cambridge.
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