Republicans push back as Democrats seek to blame Pelosi attack on GOP “insult”
Published: Sunday, October 20, 2011 at 6:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, October 20, 2011 at 6:30 a.m.
(Associated Press) In this Oct. 8, 2011 photo, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., speaks in the Capitol in Washington. Republicans are taking full advantage of the Democratic-led House impeachment investigation into President Barack Obama’s dealings with Ukraine to accuse Pelosi of “insulting” their intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
Republicans are citing a portion of a recent speech that President Barack Obama gave to the National Council of La Raza as justification for the impeachment of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — and it was only in retrospect that Republicans began to look through the president’s remarks more closely.
In January 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder said that “if the United States believes that a foreign government, in this case, a hostile foreign power such as Russia, is responsible for a particular attack,” the U.S. must make a determination whether that attack “can or should be attributed to a particular government.”
The House has been holding impeachment hearings in which witnesses from the nation’s intelligence agencies and law enforcement offices have accused President Obama of improperly pressuring Ukraine to open an investigation into the energy company Burisma Holdings, accused of paying for campaign-related activities of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter in 2014.
One of the witnesses, former Acting Director of National Intelligence John McLaughlin, testified Friday that it was an “inconceivable statement” that the United States would not investigate a company for alleged corruption if that company was believed to be working on behalf of a foreign power. “I can’t imagine why we could not have an investigation of Burisma,” McLaughlin said, noting that both the U.S. and the European Union had already investigated the country for alleged corruption.
Yet Obama left out one key part of this quote during his Jan. 23 speech to the National Council of La Raza at the National Press Club.
“In a time of war or when other foreign policies are under debate, I do not look for a foreign government to be able to influence the policies that I think are in the United States’ interest,” he said. “I think that’s a bedrock principle that