New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has demanded that any Republican who does not want to see President Donald Trump impeached "go on the record" with a vote and carry that "stain on their careers for the rest of their lives."
Speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Ocasio-Cortez said it was "outrageous" for Republicans opposed to Trump's impeachment to "protect the amount of lawlessness" that she said the U.S. leader has displayed.
"We have to do our job and I think that once the House impeaches, the House has impeached the president and then that hearing goes to the Senate," Ocasio-Cortez said.
"If they want to fail it, then I want to see every Republican go on the record and knowingly vote against impeachment of this president knowing his corruption, having it on the record so that they can have that stain on their careers for the rest of their lives," she said.
Of the 235 Democrats in the House, at least 134 to date have signaled their support for starting the impeachment inquiry process, according to CNN.
Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, a former Republican-turned-independent, has also called for impeachment proceedings, raising the number of representatives in favor of launching the process to 135.
Calls for an impeachment inquiry have grown stronger in the wake of former special counsel Robert Mueller's testimony before Congress in July.
If an inquiry were to take place, it would likely delve further into the Trump's role in hush payments made in the lead-up to the 2016 election to two women who had claimed to have had affairs with him.
It would also look at whether Trump's hotel properties have illegally benefited from government business, just as the U.S. leader faces fresh scrutiny after the extent of U.S. Air Force stopovers at his Turnberry resort in Scotland came to light.
Even if the House did vote to impeach Trump, however, the bid to remove him would likely die in the Republican-controlled Senate.
But in her comments on Tuesday, Ocasio-Cortez made clear that even if the measure were to fail in Senate, it would at least provide a record of the lawmakers responsible for killing it.
A number of Democratic senators have also thrown their support behind launching impeachment proceedings, including 2020 candidate Sen. Kamala Harris of California, who has previously said that she believes Congress should "take the steps towards impeachment."
Harris has also said, however, that she is "a realist," suggesting that the bid is unlikely to be successful.
"I have also witnessed folks in the United States Congress, and in particular in the GOP, who have been presented with many reasons to push back against this president and they have not," she said.
