Trump Highlights Hypocrisy With Complaints About Pelosi’s Prison Comments
President Donald Trump and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (AP)
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has been fighting back calls for the impeachment of President Trump for months. Many Democratic lawmakers, Republican Rep. Justin Amash, and presidential candidates have been pushing for the launch of an impeachment inquiry since Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s redacted report was released. Those calls have risen in intensity since Mueller’s public statement, which further highlighted the fact Mueller expected Congress to hold Trump accountable for obstruction. Pelosi’s latest attempt to push back on impeachment has raised eyebrows and the hypocritical ire of President Trump.
This week, reports alleged that when House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) pushed Pelosi to let him move to open an impeachment inquiry, Pelosi told him that she’d rather see Trump in prison than be impeached. Pelosi has pushed this idea before that if the Senate exonerates President Trump, then he somehow can’t be prosecuted once he leaves office. That isn’t how double jeopardy works. Either way, these statements about imprisoning Trump were objectively problematic.
No politician, not the President or the Speaker of the House, should be talking about who should be imprisoned and who should not. It’d be best for Pelosi to focus on holding Trump accountable using her constitutional means while Trump is in office and then let the justice system do its own thing once he leaves office. President Trump jumped on the comments without a hint of self-awareness.
In an interview on Fox News right before his speech at Normandy on Thursday, President Trump attacked Pelosi for making those comments. Today, President Trump took to Twitter to express his dismay.
…and have no intention of doing anything other than going on a fishing expedition to see if they can find anything on me – both illegal & unprecedented in U.S. history. There was no Collusion – Investigate the Investigators! Go to work on Drug Price Reductions & Infrastructure!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 7, 2019
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Fox News Anchor Sean Hannity also expressed some faux outrage over the comments as well.
Trump (who is now implicated in two campaign finance felonies in the SDNY and likely obstructed justice) and members of his campaign (like Michael Flynn who have literally pleaded guilty to felonies) called for Clinton to be jailed with absolutely no evidence of crimes
Hypocrisy https://t.co/HbWaxcnGyc
— Ahmed Baba (@AhmedBaba_) June 7, 2019
Donald Trump falsely accused his perceived political opponents of treason just last week and spent his entire Campaign calling for Hillary Clinton to be locked up with no evidence of crimes.
@nytimes: Bannon, Ivanka, Kushner, Miller, Cohn, & Priebus all used private emails
2016 Trump on Clinton emails: “She should be in jail”
— Rantt Media (@RanttMedia) September 26, 2017
Although Pelosi’s comments were inappropriate, it’s entirely inaccurate to make a direct comparison to Trump’s calls for Clinton to be jailed. The FBI found no crimes on the part of Clinton with her use of a private email server. Republican congressional probes found no wrongdoing on her part in Benghazi. The Clinton Foundation is still up and running—the Trump Foundation was shut down due to criminal activity. Also important to note that Trump has actually already ordered an investigation into his perceived enemies and has embraced his worst authoritarian tendencies.
President Trump, on the other hand, had been implicated in two campaign finance felonies which his personal fixer Michael Cohen has pleaded guilty and was convicted for. Over 1,000 former federal prosecutors have signed a letter asserting that President Trump would be indicted for the obstruction evidence outlined in the Mueller report if it weren’t for the OLC memos stating sitting president cannot be indicted. Needless to say, Trump may very well be in legal trouble when he leaves office. But that is better left to the federal prosecutors. For now, many Trump critics believe an impeachment inquiry that highlights Trump’s corruption would be a good start.
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