U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she is opposed to moving to impeach President Donald Trump unless the reasons are bipartisan and too overwhelming to ignore.
In an interview with the Washington Post, Pelosi said that Trump isn’t worth the division and instability that would be caused by impeachment.
“I’m not for impeachment,” Pelosi said.
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“Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path because it divides the country,” she said.
“He’s just not worth it.”
Pelosi’s remarks came as special counsel Robert Mueller prepares to deliver a report outlining his findings in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.
Any evidence of wrongdoing could prompt Congress to act against the president, who is the subject of several investigations in the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives.
While Pelosi said she wasn’t in favour of impeaching Trump, she maintained that he wasn’t fit for the presidency.
“No, I don’t think he’s fit to be president of the United States,” Pelosi told the Post, adding that he was “ethically unfit, intellectually unfit, curiosity-wise unfit.”
Pelosi has some experience with impeachment, having served as a newer lawmaker when Republicans led impeachment proceedings against former president Bill Clinton.
When she became House Speaker in 2007, she resisted pressure from her liberal flank to launch impeachment proceedings against former president George W. Bush over the Iraq War. Pelosi said that if Democrats had tried to impeach Bush when she was Speaker, voters may never have elected Barack Obama as president in 2008.
“If we had gone down that path, I doubt we would have won the White House,” she said at the time. “People have to see we’re working there for them.”
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Talk of impeachment proceedings against Trump intensified after Democrats won a majority in the House in the 2018 midterm elections.
But Pelosi was quick to state that she wouldn’t fixate on the possibility of impeachment proceedings.
“We shouldn’t impeach the president for political reasons and we shouldn’t not impeach the president for political reasons,” she told the Associated Press in November.
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Since Trump’s election, Democrats have twice tried to force votes on impeachment proceedings, winning a high-water mark of more than 60 supporters — far from the 218 needed.
— With files from the Associated Press