Pelosi tells Trump, "You got into my wheelhouse"

WASHINGTON – President Nancy Pelosi and President Trump discussed gun violence Tuesday morning when the President abruptly changed the subject to adopt a whistleblower complaint from the intelligence community that raised the issue of indictment by police. Democrats.

Ms. Pelosi stopped her net.

"Mr. President," she said, according to someone familiar with the conversation, "you entered my wheelhouse".

This remark referred to Pelosi's quarter-century of intelligence experience in Congress, an aspect of her biography that played a pivotal role in her decision on Tuesday to open an investigation into Mr. M's indictment. Trump.

This decision is the act that has the most impact as president and could shape the future of the Trump presidency, the 2020 elections and the nation. This is the last chapter of his difficult relationship with the President and a dramatic reversal for Ms. Pelosi, who until a few days ago had been deeply opposed to the dismissal of Mr. Trump despite the deep disgust she had expressed for him and his conduct.

For Pelosi, the intelligence and national security implications of the latest allegations against Trump helped reverse the trend.

Long before speaking, Ms. Pelosi was the highest democrat of the House's intelligence committee, overseeing the secret operation of the US national security apparatus and helping to draft the law that governs the way in which intelligence officials file complaints from whistleblowers and how this information is shared with Congress.

She saw the latest allegations against Trump that he lobbied Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate a major political rival.

Ms. Pelosi has always been a disconcerting character for Mr. Trump, as a powerful woman who is not afraid to confront him in the face, and one of the few people in Washington whom he regards as an equal. His televised report of the president at the closing of the government last year – "Do not characterize the strength that I bring," she told Mr. Trump, after he had Attempted to knock her out at a meeting at the Oval Office – a source of instant fascination in Washington, before she even became an official speaker.

Now, at a time of profound discord in American politics, the speaker confronts the president again, drawing on something that Mr. Trump does not have: an intimate knowledge of the intelligence community, gleaned from during the 10 years spent at the committee and 15 others an ex officio member, by virtue of his position of leadership.

She tackles the issue with an uncompromising attitude and tells her colleagues that she is particularly well placed to confront the President in matters of intelligence and national security.

"Some of you know it, others do not," Pelosi said of her 25-year term on the intelligence committee, at an in camera meeting of Democrats. of the House Tuesday night, before announcing his impeachment decision, according to a Democratic assistant was in the room. "No one has ever served in the direction that has had experience and exposure to intelligence."

The announcement of the dismissal Tuesday night seemed to surprise Mr. Trump; During the morning phone call, he told Ms. Pelosi that he was not blocking the publication of the report on the whistleblowers and had offered to do so, apparently waiting to put an end to a constitutional confrontation.

On Wednesday in New York, at the United Nations General Assembly, he stated that Ms. Pelosi "was no longer the speaker of the House," adding, "Look, she is sure she is the best woman in the world. is lost and has been taken over by the radical left. "

On Capitol Hill, Republican House leaders accused Pelosi of abusing her power and undermining the impeachment process.

"I just watched the speaker yesterday humiliate the president's office," said representative Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican and minority leader, calling the day "a dark day for the rule of law" and "a dark day for national security ".

For months, while the left was calling for an impeachment procedure, Pelosi retreated, calling for caution. She was guided by a deep conviction that the process would create a bitter division for the country and not only fail to sack Mr. Trump, but would strengthen him politically even if it harmed moderate Democrats in Republican-oriented districts and, by extension, the party's chances of retaining a majority in the House.

But the president's admission that he had urged the head of Ukraine to investigate the former vice president Joseph R. Biden Jr., main candidate for the Democratic nomination to the presidency, and the refusal of his administration to give Congress a complaint against him, have put on the back. the edge.

In 1998, she helped draft a law protecting whistleblowers in the intelligence community – the same law Democrats contend, namely that Mr. Trump mocks.

"She takes very, very seriously the fact that we have a clear law, that she participated in the drafting or adoption, that says that you will refer this complaint," said Representative Tom Malinowski, Democrat of New Jersey. "It's as clear as the day. What I hear is an important factor in the decision she made. "

Ms. Pelosi, a California Democrat, joined the Intelligence Committee in 1993, just six years after winning a special election to fill a vacancy following the death of her predecessor, Sala Burton. As an ambitious woman eager to join the ranks, she felt that she needed to acquire foreign policy credentials. She viewed the Intelligence Committee as a way to access leadership.

"She often talked about trying to escalate the power and the glass ceiling that was imposed on women – especially in the areas of foreign policy and national security, as if these areas were the exclusive domain of men Said Steve Israel, a former congressman from New York who has held leadership positions with Ms. Pelosi.

"She has always been very proud to break that glass ceiling as a person who has not only taken the leadership of the House, but has also played a leading role on the Intelligence Committee," said Mr. Israel.

She spent 10 years on the panel, before becoming a member of the ranking. When she became a Democratic leader in 2003, she left the committee list, but continued to sit. That makes her a member of the so-called gang of eight – the bipartisan leaders of the House and Senate, as well as their intelligence committees. The gang has frequently met with Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, less with Mr. Trump.

Stacy Kerr, a former senior adviser to Ms. Pelosi, said the exhibition may have shaped the speaker's approach to the current president. "I think that she may have learned the art of discretion, it's that your power is what you know," Ms. Kerr said. "Your power is not always that you express what you know."

The appointment of Ms. Pelosi to the Panel of Experts took place at a very different time when the Intelligence Committee was known for its bipartisan action. She was a Democrat in 2001, during the September 11 attacks, and was instrumental in creating a joint House-Senate committee to investigate the failings of the intelligence services that provoked them. .

In 2003, when Bush asked for permission to wage war on Iraq, Pelosi voted against, repeatedly saying that she did not believe that intelligence services would support Bush's claim. that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. She's proven to be correct – a story she tells in her 2008 autobiography, "Know Your Power".

"As the top Democratic leader of the Intelligence Committee at the time of the vote in Iraq, I told the press, by voting no, that the intelligence services were not supporting the looming threat that the administration claimed, said Ms. Pelosi. wrote. "And the press asked:" Do you call the president a liar? "I declare a fact," I replied.

But Ms. Pelosi was also criticized for not being objected to the Bush administration's secret post-9/11 spying program, of which she had been informed as a Democratic leader. She said at the time that she had expressed in a letter her concern about the program to the Bush administration, but that she could not make it public because it "s about it. she had been classified.