House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) suggested on Monday that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was compelled to start an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) publicly criticized the Democrats for not doing so.
“Speaker Pelosi jumped the gun two years ago.” Scalise told Fox News host Bill Hemmer. “Many of her members have been calling for impeachment and she has been enabling that.”
“In fact, it was a tweet from [Ocasio-Cortez] over the weekend that was really kind of threatening and saying that the Democrats are the ones who are committing a scandal by not impeaching the president,” he continued. “And lo and behold, two days later she calls for impeaching the president without listening a single high crime or misdemeanor.”
Radicals & socialists have taken over the Democrat Party. They're calling all the shots now.
Just last week, they pressured Pelosi into launching a baseless impeachment inquiry based on false rumors & left-wing rage.
This is a witch hunt of @realDonaldTrump, plain & simple. pic.twitter.com/60btf1wNyy
— Steve Scalise (@SteveScalise) September 30, 2019
Scalise’s remarks were in reference to a tweet that the self-proclaimed “radical” congresswoman posted on September 21. In it, she stated that “at this point, the bigger national scandal isn’t the president’s lawbreaking behavior — it is the Democratic Party’s refusal to impeach him for it.”
Only days later, Pelosi announced that House Democrats would be moving forward with an impeachment inquiry. The move was in response to a whistleblower’s testimony accusing Trump of asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden for using his position as vice president to remove a Ukrainian prosecutor who was looking into his son’s business dealings.
The reports were not confirmed at the time of Pelosi’s decision, and it wasn’t until a day later that the White House released a transcript of Trump’s exchange with Zelensky. After the transcript was made public, many have argued that it failed to show a direct quid pro quo that was initially alleged.
“That’s what is so irresponsible about this — it really is an abuse of power to just constantly go after a president and say we’re going to impeach him even if there’s nothing to impeach him on,” Scalise said. “And she and many of her [Democratic] leaders have said that.”
“In fact, [House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler], the chairman of one of her powerful committees said a few weeks ago that he hopes to bring impeachment proceedings onto the floor by the end of this year,” he continued. “And when pressed to name a single high crime or misdemeanor, [House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer] at the time couldn’t even list one.”
“Look, they’ve been investigating this president since the day he took office because they don’t like the results of the election in 2016,” Scalise added.
The Louisiana congressman further noted that at this point, he would have preferred the White House not to have released the transcript; Scalise contended that by doing so, Democrats will expect the president’s conversations with foreign leaders to be made publicly available going forward.
“The idea that they now expect every conversation between the president and a world leader to be made public — are they going to go back in time with President Obama or any other president?” Scalise asked. “Frankly, I hope they don’t because it’s not a good standard to set.”