https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/nancy-pelosi-mueller-doesn’t-have-to-indict-trump-for-congress-to-impeach-him/ar-BBPzozm?ocid=spartandhp
Nancy Pelosi: Mueller Doesn’t Have to Indict Trump for Congress to Impeach Him
Nancy Pelosi really does not want to impeach Donald Trump—and she’s prepared to take all the heat from her party and the new House Democratic majority she’s hoping to lead, unless she sees something wildly different emerge.
But she said she won’t let Bob Mueller define the decision.
“Recognize one point,” Pelosi told me in an interview in the conference room of her minority leader suite in the Capitol late Friday. “What Mueller might not think is indictable could be impeachable.”
Pelosi said people should pray for the country as long as Trump is in charge. She’s not sure of his mental condition. She thinks he’s degraded the Constitution and American values. She says the intelligence assessments are indisputable that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. She thinks the firing of Jeff Sessions and appointment of Matt Whitaker as acting attorney general in a clear move against the Mueller probe “is perilously close to a Constitutional crisis.”
That’s not enough, she said.
“You have to have evidence, evidence of the connection. Everything’s about the connection,” Pelosi explained.
In other words, it comes down to a topic the president has notably refrained from tweeting about for weeks: collusion.
[Read: Trump Is About to Get a Rude Awakening]
Maybe there’s something else in his tax returns. Maybe there’s something that’s beyond the special counsel’s scope. Maybe there’s something Trump has yet to do. “That’s why we want to see the documents,” Pelosi said. “Because we’re seeking truth. We’re seeking truth for the American people about the integrity of our elections and honoring the Constitution.”
Opponents are working overtime to block her from getting enough votes on the floor to be speaker, counting on all the new members who said during their campaigns that they wouldn’t vote for her not to flake.
“Any member that pledged to vote against Pelosi or for a change in leadership during their campaign and then flips will be a political dead man or woman walking within an hour of being sworn in,” one of the House Democrats involved in the opposition effort told me Saturday. “And if they think Nancy Pelosi cares about them they should go talk to the dozens of members she made walk the plank during the cap and trade bill [in 2009] that the Senate didn't even take up for a vote. This is all about her, and not them.”
That all sounds nice, Pelosi allies point out, but Republicans across the country tried to make her a killer issue in House campaigns, and lost anyway.
[Read: The Harsh Truth Exposed by the Midterms Elections]