House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not rule out the idea of impeaching President Trump when the two met at the White House Friday, according to an aide to Pelosi.
Trump told the press after a closed-door meeting with House and Senate leaders that Pelosi said to him privately, “we’re not looking to impeach you.”
That would put her at odds with many in her caucus who want to find a way to oust the president now that they are in the majority. One lawmaker, Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., introduced articles of impeachment shortly after Congress convened on Thursday.
But Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff, Drew Hammill, suggested Trump misunderstood Pelosi and that Pelosi was only trying to make the point that the Friday meeting was about the government shutdown and nothing else.
“In his opening comments at the meeting, President Trump brought up impeachment,” Hammill said. “Speaker Pelosi made clear that today’s meeting was about re-opening government, not impeachment.”
Pelosi said in an interview on the Today show she is not excluding impeachment of Trump, although she shown little enthusiasm for it.
“We have to wait and see what happens with the Mueller report,” Pelosi said referring to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged collusion between Russians and the Trump campaign. ”We shouldn’t be impeaching for a political reason, and we shouldn’t avoid impeachment for a political reason. So, we’ll just have to see how it comes.”
