President Trump on Friday railed against House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, accusing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) of wasting her time on a “witch hunt” and demanding she return to her district, which he described as a “disgusting slum.”
Trump lashed out at Pelosi in a series of early morning tweets sent minutes before House Democrats would hear from the ousted U.S. ambassador to Ukraine in the second open hearing stemming from the impeachment inquiry.
“Nervous Nancy Pelosi, who should be home cleaning up the dangerous & disgusting Slum she is making of her District in San Francisco, where even the … filth pouring into the Pacific Ocean is rapidly becoming an environmental hazard, is getting NOTHING DONE,” Trump tweeted.
“She is a Do Nothing Democrat as Speaker, and will hopefully not be in that position very long. Approve USMCA, which has been sitting on her desk for months!” Trump continued, suggesting Pelosi was delaying approving the new United States Mexico Canada Agreement.
House Democrats are investigating whether Trump used military assistance and a White House meeting as leverage to pressure Ukraine to open up investigations that could benefit him politically. At the center of the inquiry is a July 25 phone call during which Trump asked Ukraine’s president to investigate the 2016 election interference as well as former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s business dealings in Ukraine.
Trump has insisted he did nothing wrong on the call, labeling it “perfect.” On Friday, Trump seized on a new report that Ukraine’s foreign minister said that U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland did not explicitly link security assistance to Kyiv to an investigation of the Bidens.
“The Impeachment Witch Hunt should be over with the statement made last night by the President and Foreign Minister of Ukraine,” Trump tweeted Friday.
Sondland has testified that he told a top Zelensky that security assistance would likely not flow if Ukraine did not make a public statement about the investigations. The aid was temporarily held up over the summer and released in September.