House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday said she’s not going to put a specific timetable on the formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump, but that it doesn’t have to “drag on.”
“I think that we should move with purpose and expeditiously — not hastily, though,” Mrs. Pelosi said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “We won’t have the calendar be the arbiter, but it doesn’t have to drag on.”
“It’s no use to just say, ’by such-and-such a date,’ ” she said. “But looking at the, shall we say the material that the administration is giving us, they are actually speeding up the process.”
After months of batting away impeachment talk, Mrs. Pelosi on Tuesday said the House was formally opening an inquiry into whether to recommend articles of impeachment against the president.
“It wasn’t a question of changing of mind … I didn’t change my mind,” she said. “The facts changed the situation, and they cannot be ignored.”
“We weigh the equities — I never thought he was worth it,” she said.
Many of her members started calling for a formal inquiry in the wake of a whistleblower complaint that accused the president of using his position to try to get Ukraine to dig up dirt on former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, a top political rival.
“I think we have to stay focused, as far as the public is concerned, on the fact that the president of the United States used taxpayer dollars to shake down the leader of another country for his own political gain,” Mrs. Pelosi said.
Mr. Trump has denied that he exerted undue influence.
“I had a simple and very … nice call with the new President of Ukraine, it could not have been better or more honorable, and the Fake News Media and Democrats, working as a team, have fraudulently made it look bad. It wasn’t bad, it was very legal and very good. A continuing Witch Hunt!” the president said on Twitter Friday morning.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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