PAUS President Donald Trump ‘should face the death penalty’ for treason, according to GOP challenger Bill Weld.
As impeachment talks surround the president, the long-shot Republican hopeful for 2020 slammed Trump’s ‘pressure’ on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden.
During an interview on MSNBC‘S Morning Joe, Weld outlined that Trump wasn’t ‘just undermining democratic institution’, but it is treason, ‘pure and simple’.
PAAs heard on MSNBC‘s Morning Joe, Weld said:
Talk about pressuring a foreign country to interfere with and control a US election, it couldn’t be clearer.
And that’s not just undermining democratic institutions, that is treason. It’s treason pure and simple.
The comments come after a whistleblower complaint submitted to the Intelligence Community Inspector General, regarding an ‘urgent and credible’ claim of a call between the US President and a foreign leader.
While Trump initially laughed off the complaint, branding the whistleblower ‘partisan’ and calling it a ‘political hack job’, he later confirmed to have discussed Biden and his son, Hunter, in a July call with Ukraine’s president.
PAWeld added in the interview:
The penalty for treason under the US code is death. That’s the only penalty.
The penalty under the Constitution is removal from office and that might look like a pretty good alternative to the President if he could work out a plea deal.
As reported by CNN, White House officials are considering releasing a full transcript of the call.
According to the US code, individuals found guilty of treason ‘shall suffer death’ or face imprisonment, a fine, and ‘shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States’.
PAAs per CNN, Trump said of the scrutinised call:
We had a great conversation. The conversation I had was largely congratulatory, was largely corruption – all of the corruption taking place, was largely the fact that we don’t want our people like Vice President Biden and his son [adding to the corruption].
However, Weld isn’t the only critic of Trump from within his own political party – also on the Morning Joe interview was fellow GOP challengers Joe Walsh and Mark Sanford. The former congressmen say the president needs to be impeached.
PA ImagesAs heard on MSNBC, Walsh said:
Donald Trump needs to be impeached. Period. As Bill Weld just said, he told a foreign leader two months ago to interfere in our 2020 election. He needs to be impeached.
Sanford echoed the Republicans’ views, adding: ‘I think you know where the three of us are on this larger debate.’
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After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.