Pelosi reportedly asking Democrats if it's time to impeach Trump

(Image credit: Alastair Pike/AFP/Getty Images)

published 24 September 2019

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has been discussing with Democratic lawmakers whether now is the time to start impeachment proceedings against President Trump, several congressional aides and House Democrats told The Washington Post on Monday.

Pelosi has for months said that impeachment is too divisive an issue and there needs to be more public support for it, but since reports came out that Trump pressured the Ukrainian president to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden's son, Pelosi has been sounding out her caucus.

The conversation between Trump and Ukraine's leader reportedly prompted an intelligence official to file a whistleblower complaint in August, and under the law, acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire was supposed to pass the complaint along to Congress. He so far has refused, and Pelosi has been fielding calls from Democratic lawmakers who want to know how he can be forced to turn it over, the Post report. Pelosi has given Maguire until Thursday to give lawmakers the complaint.

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As of Monday night, 145 House Democrats support impeachment, including several moderates who made their stance known earlier in the day. Seven freshmen Democrats with military and intelligence backgrounds also published an op-ed in the Post Monday night, saying in order to uphold and defend the Constitution, "Congress must determine whether the president was indeed willing to use his power and withhold security assistance funds to persuade a foreign country to assist him in an upcoming election." If he did, they added, "we believe these actions represent an impeachable offense."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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