House Speaker Nancy Pelosi believes that the impeachment inquiry currently underway has uncovered evidence that President Trump's actions amounted to bribery.
Pelosi: Impeachment Inquiry Has Yielded Evidence Trump Engaged In Bribery
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi talks to reporters after the first public hearing in the impeachment probe of President Trump. The House is looking into his effort to tie U.S. aid for Ukraine to investigations of his political opponents. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
Multiple witnesses have alleged that the president leveraged U.S. foreign policy — a meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart and security assistance funds appropriated by Congress — for investigations that could benefit him politically.
Pelosi's comments come the day after U.S. diplomats William Taylor and George Kent testified in the first public impeachment hearing held by the House Intelligence Committee. Pelosi argued that their "devastating testimony corroborated evidence of bribery."
Pressed by reporters on her use of that term, Pelosi cited the Constitution.
"Bribery, and that is in the Constitution, attached to the impeachment proceedings. The bribe is to grant or withhold military assistance in return for a public statement of a fake investigation into the elections. That's bribery."
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The Constitution says the president can be impeached or removed for "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."
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Earlier this week, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, Democratic congressman from Burbank, told NPR that bribery was among the possible articles of impeachment that the House may consider.
"Bribery, first of all, as the founders understood bribery, it was not as we understand it in law today. It was much broader," Schiff said. "It connoted the breach of the public trust in a way where you're offering official acts for some personal or political reason, not in the nation's interest."
Pelosi asserted that Democrats had not yet committed to moving forward with articles of impeachment.
"We haven't even made a decision to impeach. That's what the inquiry is about. ... What I am saying [is] that what the president has admitted to, and says is perfect — I say it's perfectly wrong. It's bribery."
She also said the process allows for the president to make a case in his defense.
"If the president has anything that is exculpatory — Mr. President, that means you have anything that shows you are innocent — then he should make that known. And that's part of the inquiry. So far we haven't seen that," Pelosi told reporters on Thursday.