Nancy Pelosi: Mueller Doesn’t Have to Indict Trump for Congress to Impeach Him

Nancy Pelosi really does not want to impeach Donald Trump—and she’s prepared to take all the heat from her party and from the new House Democratic majority she’s hoping to lead, unless she sees something wildly different emerge.

But she said she won’t let Robert Mueller define the decision.

“Recognize one point,” Pelosi told me during an interview in the conference room of her minority-leader suite in the Capitol late Friday: “What Mueller might not think is indictable could be impeachable.”

Pelosi said people should pray for the country as long as Trump is in charge. She’s not sure of his mental condition. She thinks he’s degraded the Constitution and American values. She says the intelligence assessments are indisputable in showing that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. She thinks the firing of Jeff Sessions and the appointment of Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general in a clear move against the Mueller probe “is perilously close to a constitutional crisis.”

That’s not enough, she said.

“You have to have evidence, evidence of the connection. Everything’s about the connection,” Pelosi explained.

In other words, it comes down to a topic the president has notably refrained from tweeting about for weeks: collusion.

[Read: Trump is about to get a rude awakening.]

Maybe there’s something else in his tax returns. Maybe there’s something that’s beyond the special counsel’s scope. Maybe there’s something Trump has yet to do. “That’s why we want to see the documents,” Pelosi said. “Because we’re seeking truth. We’re seeking truth for