Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi backs changing the law to clarify that a sitting president can be indicted.
Despite being slow to heed calls for impeachment against President Trump, the California Democrat told NPR on Friday that she is ready to deal a blow to Justice Department guidelines that say otherwise on presidential indictments.
“I do think that we will have to pass some laws that will have clarity for future presidents. [A] president should be indicted, if he’s committed a wrongdoing — any president. There is nothing anyplace that says the president should not be indicted,” she said on “All Things Considered.” “That’s something cooked up by the president’s lawyers. That’s what that is. But so that people will feel, ‘OK, well, if he — if he does something wrong, [he] should be able to be indicted.'”
The DOJ rule has existed for decades but has come under scrutiny recently after former special counsel Robert Mueller cited it as part of the reason why he declined to recommend obstruction of justice charges against Trump following his investigation into Russian election meddling.
While Mueller found no evidence of collusion between the Kremlin and Trump’s 2016 campaign, he did cite 10 instances of possible obstruction of justice by the president. However, he repeatedly referred to the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel opinion that prevents a sitting president from being indicted as his grounds for not recommending charges.
“The 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,” Pelosi said.
While calls for impeachment continue to grow among congressional Democrats, Pelosi has remained reluctant to do so. Her call to clarify the law on indictment echoes that of a number of Democrats, including presidential candidate and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who unveiled her plan on the matter in May.
