Sen. Angus King (I., Maine) on Wednesday pushed back against Democrats calling for President Donald Trump to be impeached over a report that he told then-FBI Director James Comey to drop the investigation into Michael Flynn, telling them to "take a deep breath."
"Morning Joe" co-host Mika Brzezinski asked King, who caucuses with Senate Democrats, on what grounds he would be willing to consider impeachment against Trump.
"I'm not there yet, "King said. " I think we've got a long way to go. We've got to slow down and take a deep breath. I think as everybody has said this morning ... that we really need the facts."
"We need to see the memos. We don't know what the context was. We don't even have Jim Comey authenticating the memo. We have a memo that's attributed to it. We have the White House saying that the conversation didn't occur. We need to see what, if any, evidence they have of that," King continued.
King said that "high crimes and misdemeanors" is a high bar and that no president has been removed from office using that.
"It cannot be used to simply change somebody whose politics we don't like, " King said. "That would be a real disservice to the Constitution, so I want to focus on getting the facts of what happened in that conversation."
The negative headlines that came out against Trump related to two meetings that he previously held with Russian officials and then-FBI director James Comey.
The Washington Post report from Monday relates to his meeting last week with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at the White House, where he reportedly disclosed highly classified information pertaining to an Islamic State terrorist threat related to the use of laptop computers on airplanes.
The New York Times report from Tuesday relates to Trump's meeting Comey in February where Trump reportedly requested that Comey drop the investigation into Flynn, his first National Security Adviser who had resigned a day earlier.