Michigan Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a freshman Democrat who flipped a battleground Republican seat, said Monday she will vote to impeach President Donald Trump.
Slotkin announced her decision in an op-ed in the Detroit Free Press. She was expected to further explain her thinking at a town hall in suburban Detroit.
Slotkin, a former national security official, wrote that presidents from both parties have leveraged their power to get foreign countries to do what is in the interests of the U.S.
“But here’s the fundamental difference: President Trump used the power of the presidency for his own benefit, to give himself some advantage in the very election that would determine whether he remained in office,” she said.
Slotkin represents the 8th Congressional District, which backed Trump over Hillary Clinton in his 2016 election but elected her in 2018 over a Republican incumbent.
The House will vote Wednesday on the impeachment articles approved last week by the House Judiciary panel. The vote is all but certain to result in Trump’s impeachment, though he is expected to be acquitted in a Senate trial.
Slotkin said she had been told more times than she can count that the vote she will cast will end her short political career.
“That may be. But in the national security world that I come from, we are trained to make hard calls on things, even if they are unpopular, if we believe the security of the country is at stake,” she wrote. “There are some decisions in life that have to be made based on what you know in your bones is right. And this is one of those times.”
