Donald Trump Is ‘Moving Closer To Impeachment’, Says House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said, on Wednesday, that she believes President Donald Trump is getting closer to impeachment. She claims that the president is inviting impeachment by trying to thwart subpoenas, and by stifling congressional efforts to look into his administration, Yahoo! News reports.
Trump has filed lawsuits and made threats in attempts to foil congressional efforts to investigate him. Most recently, he invoked executive privilege over the unredacted Mueller report, a document which House Democrats have attempted to subpoena after being given a redacted version of the report.
Trump’s invocation of executive privilege came just before the House Judiciary Committee was set to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt for refusing to hand over the full report. Barr’s refusal seemed steadfast, even after having been issued a subpoena.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Pelosi suggested that Donald Trump is digging his own political grave with his efforts.
“The point is that every single day, whether it’s obstruction, obstruction, obstruction — obstruction of having people come to the table with facts, ignoring subpoenas… every single day, the president is making a case — he’s becoming self-impeachable, in terms of some of the things that he is doing.”
It was the second time in two days that Pelosi had mentioned impeachment. On Tuesday, the California Democrat noted that one of the articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon — back during the Watergate scandal — was that he had ignored congressional subpoenas.
“Every day, [Trump is] obstructing justice by saying, ‘This one shouldn’t testify, that one shouldn’t testify,’ and the rest. So he’s making a case. But he’s just trying to goad us into impeachment.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested that President Trump is building his own case for impeachment https://t.co/LwwoQixOeK
— POLITICO (@politico) May 8, 2019
The remarks are Pelosi’s strongest words yet on the topic of impeachment.
For years now, Pelosi has deflected talk of impeachment, saying that her Democrat colleagues in Congress should focus on their own agendas for improving the lot of everyday Americans. Pelosi would prefer this positive efforts to focusing on impeaching Trump, something which she seemed hesitant about. At the very least, she had said, the House should wait until the Mueller investigation had played out.
And even after her party took control of the House of Representatives — where articles of impeachment must be filed, according to the Constitution — she was loathe to mention the I-word.
Pelosi’s words, however, don’t shed any light on when, or if, anyone in the House will file articles of impeachment. And even if articles of impeachment are introduced, it remains unclear on whether or not a majority of representatives would vote to impeach.
