House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made numerous odd claims about Trump impeachment in a new interview, including that Dems are pursuing subpoena-defying witness from the Ukraine investigation.
While speaking on ABC’s ‘This Week’ Pelosi told host George Stephanopoulos that “this president is impeached for life, regardless of any gamesmanship on the part of Mitch McConnell.”
While Congress passed articles of impeachment against the president, he still technically needs to go through a trial in the Senate to determine his guilt. One is not “impeached” until a decision is made through a trial. Congress merely conducted an inquiry into accusations that Trump tried pressuring Ukraine into investigating political rival Joe Biden in exchange for foreign aid. His guilt or innocence would not be officially determined until the Senate votes and with Republicans holding a majority there and the case against the president flimsy at best, it’s highly unlikely he will actually get impeached. A Senate trial is expected to begin within the next few weeks.
Claiming victory on impeachment was not the only odd statement from Pelosi in her Sunday interview. She also at one point claimed Democrats are “in court” fighting to get Ukraine-specific witnesses to comply with subpoenas put out by Congress. The administration had previously told officials not to comply with the investigation.
“We are in court on the witnesses. It could take a very long time,” Pelosi said after Stephanopoulos played a clip of Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins questioning Democrats not legally pursuing compliance with their subpoenas.
People to defy congressional subpoenas from the House include Rudy Giuliani, one of Trump’s personal lawyers, and White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney. Such a crime can land a person in jail for a year and slapped with a $100,000 fine, but no one has been sweating the consequences too much. When asked about the House potentially taking him to court over defying a subpoena, Giuliani simply said, “we will see what happens.”
It’s unclear what Pelosi means by being “in court” anyway since no Ukraine-specific witnesses have been pursued in court.
The only cases being pursued by Democrats in court are related to grand jury material from Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian collusion in the 2016 presidential election and a motion to force Don McGahn to testify about accusations of obstruction of justice related to that same investigation. Again, neither of these two cases have anything to do with the Ukraine investigation.
Despite Pelosi’s dubious comments, Trump critics still took to Twitter to celebrate her “impeached for life” claim and even got the phrase trending.
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