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  • 2020-01-17 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Nancy Pelosi 'Admit' She Began Impeachment Two Years Ago? (en)
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  • In mid-December 2019, U.S. President Donald Trump claimed on Twitter that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been working on impeaching him for 2 1/2 years.Trump posted another tweet, again claiming that Pelosi had been trying to impeach him for 2 1/2 years, one day later. Trump was referring to comments made by Pelosi at Politico's Women Rule summit on Dec. 10, 2019. Pelosi was asked about the speed with which the U.S. House, led by Democrats, were undertaking impeachment. Pelosi headed an impeachment inquiry in the U.S. House of Representatives against Trump, on accusations that Trump used the office of the president to attempt to extort Ukraine into producing damaging information on a potential political rival. Trump has regularly lashed out at the inquiry as unfair and has sometimes complained that Democratic lawmakers have had it in for him since before the inquiry officially started. Ultimately, the House Democratic majority voted to impeach Trump, which means that the proceedings will move to a Senate trial. In answering a question at the summit from Politico journalist Anna Palmer, Speaker Pelosi appeared to include the start of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, in the impeachment timeline. Here is the text of the exchange: Official impeachment proceedings against Trump began in the House on Nov. 13, 2019. Although Pelosi didn't state this explicitly, Democrats in the House had initially considered including evidence from the Mueller probe in the articles of impeachment, but ultimately decided against doing so. Mueller was appointed on May 17, 2017, to lead the Russia probe, meaning that from May 2017 to when Pelosi made the comments in December 2019, just over 2 1/2 years had lapsed. However, Pelosi did not initiate the Mueller investigation — the U.S. Department of Justice did. Mueller was selected to lead the probe by then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, whom Trump nominated for that position. Although Trump and his supporters have typically cast the impeachment proceedings as a Democratic conspiracy, multiple probes have been undertaken into foreign interference in elections related to Trump, including probes by both the House and Republican-led Senate. Therefore, although Pelosi apparently lumped the Mueller probe into her answer about the impeachment-inquiry timeline, she didn't thereby admit she was behind the launch of the Mueller probe, and in fact she was not. The probe was conducted by the Justice Department, which at that time was led by Jeff Sessions and Rosenstein, both of whom Trump selected to lead the agency. Investigations have found that the Russian government actively sought to influence the 2016 election in an effort to help Trump defeat his rival Hillary Clinton, although none has found conclusively evidence that Trump himself worked with the Russians in so doing. However, the current impeachment inquiry deals with Trump personally making a phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and soliciting a corruption probe into the family of 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden in exchange for crucial U.S. military aid to Ukraine. Trump claims his request was solely for the purpose of rooting out corruption in Ukraine and not for personal political gain. (en)
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