Pelosi: Impeaching Trump ‘not someplace I think we should go’

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Sunday downplayed the importance of impeaching President Trump if Democrats win back the House majority in next year’s midterms.

Pelosi, who has faced renewed calls in the past week to impeach Trump from some members of her caucus, said, “It’s not someplace I think we should go.”

She said the focus would be on stopping Trump’s tax-reform bill for now.

“Our election is about meeting the needs of the American people, stopping this tax bill right now, which is an insult to the intelligence of the American people and an assault on their financial security,” she told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

“That’s what we should be talking about.”

{mosads}Pelosi’s comments come a few days after Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) said a group of Democrats plan to file articles of impeachment against Trump before Thanksgiving.

Pelosi suggested that if Democrats retake the House, they won’t move immediately toward impeachment — which would require a majority House vote to begin a Senate trial.

“I believe that whatever we do, we have responsibility first and foremost to unify the nation,” Pelosi said on Sunday. “Second of all, you can’t go down any path without the facts and the law. If that’s there, perhaps it will come out in these investigations.”

In addition to special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of alleged ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, there are multiple congressional committees investigating Russia’s influence in the 2016 election.

Democratic mega-donor Tom Steyer in October rolled out a $10 million ad campaign calling for Trump’s impeachment. Pelosi reportedly called the effort “a distraction” in private.

Democratic leaders have been cautious in discussing the possible impeachment of Trump. 

While there is pressure from parts of the Democratic base to be aggressive on impeachment, Pelosi and other leaders are worried that talking too much about impeachment could turn voters against Democrats.

They have also worried about being too aggressive, as they feel GOP leaders under Newt Gingrich were in the 1990s when they charged ahead on impeachment proceedings against former President Clinton. 

While the House vote on impeaching Clinton did not take place until after the election, it dominated the politics leading up to the midterms, which ended in lost seats and disappointment for Republicans.

This story was updated at 1:39 p.m. on Nov. 6.