Democratic presidential candidate Eric Swalwell called on Attorney General William Barr to resign over the release of special counsel Robert Mueller's findings, saying he'd "lost the credibility of the American people."
Swalwell, who serves on both the House Judiciary Committee and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, made the comments during a Thursday MSNBC appearance to discuss the release of Mueller's full report—sparing redactions for sensitive information. Despite "no evidence" of collusion between President Donald Trump's campaign and Russia during the 2016 election, Swalwell said the report left issues to be addressed.
Mueller's "investigation lays out that the Trump team, the president himself, lied and obstructed in ways that impaired in a material fashion the investigation," the California congressman said. "Just because you may bury the evidence deep enough that we can't find everything you did, we have recourse in the United States, which is obstruction of justice."
Claiming that the findings proved President Donald Trump was a "double digit obstructer," Swalwell turned his fire on Barr.
"You can be the attorney general of the United States and represent all of us or you can represent Donald Trump," the congressman said. "You can't do both. And because Attorney General Barr wants to represent Donald Trump, I think he should resign."
"You are calling for the attorney general's resignation today?" MSNBC's Nicole Wallace said.
"Yes, he's lost the credibility of the American people," Swalwell said. "He is not recused from an investigation where he should be recused. He's embedded deeply into the Trump team and that effects the credibility that the attorney general must have."
Wallace questioned if the report's findings were a "call to duty" for Swalwell and fellow congressional Democrats to "commence impeachment proceedings" against Trump.
"Our investigation is already begun," Swalwell said. "We have a meeting this afternoon on the Judiciary Committee and we are first seeking to bring Bob Mueller in to testify to the full report because we paid for this report. We should see all of it including what's redacted as long as it doesn't affect anything ongoing."
"Aside from the investigation and looking backward, we also now have to have the imagination to put into law prohibition against so much of a conduct that the president and his team did. Just because congress in the past didn't have an imagination to prohibit a campaign from working in such a fashion with Russians doesn't mean we shouldn't put in new laws to protect our democracy from any campaign doing that in the future. I think making this about the future is the best way for us to go forward."
"Does the future include commencing impeachment proceedings based on what you're reading in the Mueller Report?" Wallace said.
"I'm going to leave that to [House Judiciary] chairman Nadler," Swalwell said. "There are concerning contacts the campaign had with the Russians and the way that the president lied, he certainly acted guilty and there are consequences for the way he and the people on his team acted."