Elizabeth Warren: Trump’s Russia scandal could be worse than Watergate

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) declared Wednesday that allegations of collusion between President Trump’s inner circle and the Russian government are potentially worse than the Watergate scandal that brought down former President Richard Nixon.

“A lot of people compare this to Nixon and they say, ‘That’s what got Nixon, was the obstruction of justice.’ And it’s true, but this is a lot worse because this one has connections to a foreign power, which the whole back-and-forth around obstruction of justice with Nixon did not include,” Warren said at a San Francisco event sponsored by Credo, a liberal advocacy group.

Warren told Credo Vice President and Political Director Murshed Zaheed that Democrats and liberal activists need to ramp up pressure on Republicans to push for answers on contacts between Trump’s advisers, the president himself and Russian officials.

“First, we make sure that we’ve gotten the facts, that you get them out there, but … we got to turn the heat up under Republicans,” she said.

{mosads}“Guys, you don’t get to take a pass on this,” she said, addressing her GOP colleagues. “You got to step up on this one.”

Warren noted that, historically, “Republicans and Democrats have agreed that obstruction of justice is an impeachable offense.”

“That has been a bipartisan position,” she said.

She said that Democrats need to keep pressure on the FBI to pursue allegations of illegal dealmaking with a foreign power, as well as obstruction of justice.

She said they also need to make sure Republicans follow through to the end a bipartisan Senate investigation into Russia’s efforts to subvert the 2016 presidential election.

“We really have to keep pushing on both of these fronts because they both pose threats both to our security from the outside but also — back to the Trump … obstruction of justice — to the very notion of rule of law, that no one in this country is above the law, not even the president of the United States,” she said.

Warren said earlier this month that she would “absolutely” support the impeachment of Trump if it was shown that he tried to interfere with the FBI’s investigation of his inner circle, including by firing FBI Director James Comey earlier this month.

“We absolutely need to get a hold of Comey’s notes, any other written papers, any tapes that may have been made, and we need to get witnesses in here under oath,” she told Jezebel recently.

Comey alleged in a memo that Trump asked him to drop the FBI’s investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.