US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that Democratic lawmakers are no longer thinking about initiating impeachment proceedings against him because the preliminary conclusions on the Russia probe indicate that there was no collusion between his 2016 election campaign and Russia.

“I don’t think they’re talking about impeachment,” Trump told reporters at the Capitol when asked about the Democrats who are still calling for a move to remove him from office, reports Efe.

Advertisement

The release on Sunday by Attorney General William Barr of a summary of the report prepared by Special Counsel Robert Mueller has altered the chances that Trump would face impeachment, analysts say, because the available information points to the fact that there is no proof of collusion by Trump’s team with Russia and it is not clear whether or not the president obstructed justice.

However, at least two Democratic legislators — Rashida Tlaib and Al Green — said on Monday that they still want to launch proceedings to impeach the president, and Tlaib told Politico magazine that she was planning to present a resolution on that matter in the near future.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had already weighed in against the possibility of launching impeachment proceedings even before Mueller closed his investigation late last week, and some progressives who had been in favour of doing so have now acknowledged that it is very unlikely.

Trump on Tuesday declared that “the Mueller report was great. It could not have been better. It said ‘no obstruction, no collusion,’ it could not have been better.'”

The president once again criticised those who promoted the investigation more than two years ago and said that the Democrats “and others created a fraud on our country with this ridiculous witch hunt — where it was proven very strongly no collusion, no obstruction, no nothing.

Trump said that the country should not allow such an investigation to be mounted ever again, claiming that it started at a rather low level but on instructions from above, although he did not get more specific.

The Democratic opposition has asked Barr to turn over to Congress the full Mueller report by April 2 and are also insisting that the entire report be made public so that there can be no doubt about the investigation’s conclusions.