Pelosi spoke a day after the House voted to set up a formal process for public hearings in an investigation of the allegations that US President Donald Trump used his office to pressure Ukraine to open a politically motivated investigation in exchange for releasing military aid.
“I would assume there would be public hearings in November,” Pelosi said in a roundtable with Bloomberg reporters and editors, adding that any case made to impeach the president “has to be ironclad.”
“I don’t know what the timetable will be,” she said. “We have not made any decisions on if the president will be impeached.”
Trump, while leaving the White House for a campaign rally in Mississippi, told reporters, “You can’t impeach a president who did nothing wrong. You can’t impeach a president who has the greatest economy.”
Pelosi also declared that Congress should pursue an impeachment inquiry regardless of its impact on financial markets. “The markets have their own strength and their resilience,” she said.
On 24 September, House Democrats launched an impeachment inquiry over a whistleblower complaint that claimed Trump might have abused his power by allegedly pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a 25 July phone call to investigate potential corruption by former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
Trump released the transcript of the call and slammed the impeachment inquiry as a “hoax” and another political witch hunt aimed at reversing the result of the 2016 US presidential election.
