Pelosi intensifies rhetoric on Trump: ‘It’s bribery’
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is escalating her rhetoric against President Trump as the House conducts its impeachment inquiry into him, calling his actions bribery.
“I am saying that what the president has admitted to and says, ‘It’s perfect,’ I say it’s perfectly wrong,” Pelosi, DSan Francisco, said at a news conference Thursday. “It’s bribery.”
Pelosi’s word choice reflected a broader move among
House Democrats to simplify their language when criticizing Trump’s conduct toward Ukraine — and ditch clunky legalese — as they make a case to the American public that the president should be removed from office. “Quid pro quo,” a Latin phrase meaning something favorable being traded for something else, had been the primary allegation of choice against Trump for Democrats in recent weeks.
“English words are easier to understand than Latin
words,” said Rep. Jim Himes, DConn., a member of the House Intelligence Committee that is holding impeachment hearings this week and next.
The choice also has legal significance: Bribery is one of just two specific charges cited in the Constitution as impeachable conduct — the other being treason — along with the more opentointerpretation “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Pelosi alleged that the bribery was Trump making military assistance to Ukraine conditioned on “a public statement of a fake investigation into the elections.” She was referring to Trump’s request in a July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that he look into Democrats’ actions in the 2016 election and into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, who served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. There is no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on Pelosi’s remarks.
Two career diplomats testified before Congress on Wednesday that Trump had withheld $391 million in military aid to Ukraine and an invitation to meet at the White House as part of a pressure campaign for a public statement announcing such investigations. The aid was released in September after a government whistleblower complained that what Trump was doing was improper.
At Wednesday’s hearing, many of the Democrats used their time questioning the witnesses to try to simplify the narrative on Ukraine. Dublin Rep. Eric Swalwell prompted career diplomat William Taylor, the charge d’affaires in Kyiv, to agree the president’s actions were “wrong.”
“I thought him saying, ‘Yes, it’s wrong,’ that’s important,” Swalwell, a former Alameda County prosecutor, said Thursday. “Because I think for most everyday folks at home, they look at their leaders through the lens of right or wrong, and I think that is where we have to start.”
Democrats say some members of the caucus have urged that lawmakers keep their impeachment arguments simple and understandable, but also say their message has been refined as more facts have come to light.
“There have been a number of people in the caucus who have said, ‘Let’s keep it as simple as possible,’ and that’s been an ongoing discussion over the past few months,” said Fremont Rep. Ro Khanna. “Obviously, in politics you continue to figure out how best to communicate in a few words, and that’s what the speaker and (Intelligence Committee Chairman) Adam Schiff are doing.”
Many of the Democrats on the Intelligence Committee have started using the words “bribery” and “extortion” in public to describe the president’s actions. Calling them “cousin offenses,” Himes said the point was that Trump had abused the powers of his office.
“As the facts develop and we learn more about what both the carrots and the sticks were, we are refining the way we talk about it,” Himes said.
Pelosi said the House is still deciding whether to bring articles of impeachment against Trump, which is the point of the Intelligence Committee hearings. But she says that as far as she’s concerned, the evidence is clear.
“What President Trump has done on the record in terms of acting to advantage a foreign power to help him in his own election, and the obstruction of information about that — the coverup — makes what (Richard) Nixon did look almost small,” Pelosi said.