House GOP Leader Decries Pelosi Impeachment Inquiry Announcement: ‘She Does Not Speak for America’

In a brief, public statement, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy hit back at Speaker Nancy Pelosi just minutes after her bombshell press conference announcing a formal impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump: “She does not speak for America.”

McCarthy, surrounded by the House Republican leadership, blasted the investigation of Trump’s involvement in enlisting Ukrainian government assistance in probing potential 2020 rival Joe Biden as itself a partisan attack by Democrats.

“They have been investigating this president before he even got elected,” McCarthy said, before implying the whistleblower complaint of Trump, which just arose last month, was a continuation of previous lines of inquiry about the president. “Our job is to legislate, not to continue to investigate something in the back when you cannot find any reason to impeach this president.”

“I realize 2016 did not turn out the way Speaker Pelosi wanted it to happen, but she cannot change the laws of this Congress,” McCarthy added. “She cannot unilaterally decide an impeachment inquiry. What she said today made no difference of what’s been going on. It is no different than what [Hosue Judiciary Chair Jerrold] Nadler has been trying to do. It’s time to put the public before politics.”

Minutes later, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell released his own reaction in a public statement, which he posted on Twitter.

In it, he too framed the Trump-Ukraine impeachment inquiry as a re-litigation of the 2016 election by Democrats.

“Washington Democrats have been searching for a ways to reverse their 2016 election defeat since before President Trump was even inaugurated,” McConnell wrote. “Democrats have simply shifted to new arguments for their predetermined conclusion.”

“This rush to judgment comes just a few hours after President Trump offered to release the details of his phone conversation with President Zelensky,” he added. “It simply confirms that House Democrats’ priority is not making life better for the American people but their nearly three-year-old fixation on impeachment.”

My statement on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s impeachment inquiry announcement:https://t.co/6dtEHGTEMV pic.twitter.com/8zYrYD3Bhn

— Leader McConnell (@senatemajldr) September 24, 2019

Watch the video above, via CNN.

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