Impeaching President Donald Trump is not a priority, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said on Wednesday despite his lawyer Michael Cohen's guilty plea a day earlier to campaign finance violations that implicated the president, The Hill reported.
Cohen pleaded guilty on Tuesday to several tax and bank fraud charges and a campaign finance violation, saying Trump had told him to arrange payments to two women during his 2016 presidential campaign so that they would remain silent about alleged affairs with him.
"Impeachment has to spring from something else," Pelosi told AP. "If and when the information emerges about that, we’ll see. It’s not a priority on the agenda going forward unless something else comes forward.”
Instead, Pelosi said Democrats should focus on oversight of the president and allow special counsel Robert Mueller to finish the investigation into Russian meddling in the presidential election.
Pelosi has long downplayed the possibility of impeachment, saying earlier this year that the topic is a “divisive issue” and “not the path the party should go on” this year, CNBC reported.
Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said that her view has not changed even after the news of Cohen’s plea and Manafort’s conviction.