Did House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi just pull a ninja Jedi Matrix move on former House Speaker Newt Gingrich? In an interview with TPMDC, Leader Pelosi promised to release some juicy stuff about the current GOP frontrunner, “when the time is right.”

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Gingrich responded to Pelosi Monday afternoon by warning Pelosi about such revelations, not because they weren’t true, but because he says they would violate House rules.

RELATED: Nancy Pelosi Says She’ll Dish Dirt On Newt Gingrich ‘When The Time Is Right’

In an interview conducted Friday, but published on Monday, Leader Pelosi told TPMDC’s Brian Beutler, “One of these days we’ll have a conversation about Newt Gingrich,” adding, “I know a lot about him. I served on the investigative committee that investigated him, four of us locked in a room in an undisclosed location for a year. A thousand pages of his stuff.”

When Beutler asked for details, Pelosi responded, “Not right here…When the time’s right.”

Asked about Pelosi’s threat Monday afternoon, Gingrich didn’t respond by saying, “

Bring it on! I’m an open book,” but instead, pointedly attacked the messenger, not the message. “I want to thank Speaker Pelosi for what I would regard as an early Christmas gift,” Gingrich said. “If she is suggestIng that she would use material developed when she was on the ethics commIttee, that is a fundamental violation of the rules of the House.”

He went on to say that Leader Pelosi’s comments demonstrated that the ethics committee was “tainted,” then underscored, again, his problem with such disclosures. “I would hope the House would immediately condemn her if she uses any materIal that was gathered while she was on the ethics committee, because it would be a violation of the committee.”

Gingrich then provided his own generous summary of the ethics probe that resulted in an unprecedented $300,000 fine, and made him the first House Speaker in history to be disciplined for ethical misconduct. Even here, Gingrich never claims to have acted ethically, only that certain of his activities were “totally legal.”

Leader Pelosi’s office responded, through a spokesperson, that she ““was clearly referring to the extensive amount of information that is in the public record, including the comprehensive committee report with which the public may not be fully aware.”

She also, apparently, succeeded in drawing former Speaker Gingrich into a very public exchange that highlights the candidate’s ethical difficulties, and

a tacit admission that the dirt is there, but that Gingrich ironically thinks that ethics rules should protect him from such revelations. Pelosi won a gunfight simply by unsnapping her holster, and watching Gingrich shoot himself in the foot over and over.

Here’s the clip of Gingrich’s response, from C-Span:
Tags: Brian Beutler, election, Nancy Pelosi, Newt Gingrich