When will the GOP finally speak out?

Now that Robert Mueller has broken months of silence, declined informal invitations to appear before Congress and said his report “is my testimony,” it now falls to lawmakers to take the next steps, if any, in the matter of President Donald Trump.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been hesitant to initiate impeachment proceedings against Trump. Her caution is well placed.

Impeachment is an extraordinary political remedy under the Constitution. The democratic process by which we elect a president is defined by passion and partisanship, but any effort to remove that leader is likely to be unsuccessful if it is similarly motivated. As an English lord chancellor once wrote, “The power of impeachment ought to be, like Goliath’s sword, kept in the temple, and not used but on great occasions.”

With the exception thus far of Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), Republicans have taken the position that Mueller’s redacted report has resolved all issues of alleged presidential collusion with the Russians and obstruction of justice. Case closed.

This is not a tenable position. The Mueller report has raised nearly as many questions as it has answered. But more important, as someone who legislatively helped craft the original Office of Special Counsel, I can attest that Congress never intended to subcontract out its investigative powers to the executive branch.

Congress can be informed by, and take advantage of, Justice Department or special counsel investigations, but it should never be limited by them.

During the Watergate scandal, most Americans initially opposed impeachment proceedings being launched against President Richard Nixon. But as the hearings moved forward, we learned that the president had authorized the payment of hush money to those who had engaged in criminal activity, urged his subordinates to commit perjury before Congress, and attempted to have the CIA derail an ongoing FBI investigation.

In the end, six Republicans placed loyalty to the rule of law above our political affiliation and political futures. We concluded that Nixon engaged in obstruction of justice and abuse of power. The silence of Republicans today in the face of presidential behavior that is unacceptable is both striking and deeply disappointing.

When one talks privately to some Republican members about a president who lurches from tweet to taunt; who is incapable of telling the truth; and who accepts the word of President Vladimir Putin and rejects the intelligence community’s judgment that Russia launched a cyberattack at the heart of our democracy, they express disdain and alarm at how he conducts the nation’s affairs. Yet, the same members are reluctant to speak out publicly even in the face of behavior they would find intolerable by any previous president.

Fear is a potent weapon. Trump uses the accelerant of social media to rally and stir the passions of his supporters, even with information that is false. Technology’s ubiquity, speed and power, and other profound changes, make this a more complex time than the Watergate era was. But Congress should not turn away from the central issue of whether Trump has, in word and deed, engaged in conduct that is fundamentally inconsistent with, and antithetical to, the highest office in the land.

If Congress cannot secure the cooperation of executive branch officials in the exercise of its oversight responsibilities, it will have no choice but to enter the temple and remove the fabled sword.

 William S. Cohen is a former Republican senator and defense secretary who served on the House Judiciary Committee in 1974 during the Watergate impeachment inquiry. He wrote this for The Washington Post.