House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., came to the defense of Rep. Jane Harman, the former top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee who was wiretapped by federal investigators for supposedly trying to get the sentences of two pro-Israel agents reduced in exchange for help in securing the spy panel’s chairmanship.

Pelosi, speaking to a group of reporters at an event sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor, called Harman “a patriotic American” who “would never do anything to harm her country.”