House Speaker Nancy Pelosi remains on the fence about impeaching the current occupant of the Oval Office, but she says Congress should make it clear that bringing criminal charges against a crooked commander in chief is absolutely lawful.
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In an interview with NPR on Friday, Pelosi said Congress should pass laws to clarify that a sitting president can indeed be indicted.
โ[A] president should be indicted, if heโs committed a wrongdoingโany president,โ Pelosi told NPR. โThere is nothing anyplace that says the president should not be indicted.โ
As Politico explains, the issue of whether a sitting president can be criminally charged was brought to the fore this spring when then special counsel Robert Mueller issued his long-awaited report on whether the Russians interfered with the 2016 presidential election, with Trump obstructing justice regarding the matter.
In his report, Mueller indicated that due to the Justice Departmentโs long-standing practice of not indicting sitting presidents, heโd had no plans to charge Trump, no matter his findings, leaving the decision for Congress.
The aftermath has left the country and Congress much divided, with a sizable number of House Democrats calling for impeachment proceedings against Trump.
Pelosi remains hesitant on the issue of impeachment, fearing backlash ahead of an election year, but she told NPR that she was clear about the need to make it clear that there is nothing in the Constitution that precludes indicting a president. She called such an erroneous take โsomething cooked up by the presidentโs lawyers.โ
The lawmaker from California said the nationโs founders simply never could have imagined the type of excess and blatant disregard for presidential normsย as has been displayed by Trump:
โThe Founders could never suspect that a president would be so abusive of the Constitution of the United States, that the separation of powers would be irrelevant to him and that he would continue, any president would continue, to withhold facts from the Congress, which are part of the constitutional right of inquiry,โ Pelosi said.
Perhaps prisonโover impeachmentโreally is more what Pelosi has in mind when it comes to the current sitting president.
Earlier this year, Pelosi reportedly remarked to members of her caucus, when asked about beginning an impeachment inquiry: โI donโt want to see him impeached. I want to see him in prison.โ
Guess only time will tell.
But in any case, in remarks to NPR, Pelosi stood firmโin her hesitancyโwhen it came to the issue of impeaching Trump, telling the public radio station:
Congress would continue to follow โthe facts and the law.โ
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