Nancy Pelosi drops the hammer on Corey Lewandowski
While Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was busy smirking and perjuring his way through his public House Judiciary Committee testimony yesterday, some members of the committee asked Chairman Jerry Nadler if he would hold Lewandowski in contempt. Nadler punted, seemingly implying that he would need to coordinate with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on how to move forward.
Today, Nancy Pelosi delivered her answer in definitive fashion, stating that Corey Lewandowski should indeed have been held in contempt of Congress. She did it behind closed doors, but she did so knowing that it would immediately leak – and sure enough, it did, to Politico. So what’s the point of this, and where’s it going from here?
This means that Corey Lewandowski almost certainly will be held in contempt of Congress. This is a big deal. But as we’ve seen with others in the Trump regime who have been held in contempt of Congress, it’s a complex legal process, and it doesn’t involve the person magically falling through a trap door. Some of the outside observers calling for Lewandowski to have been held in contempt yesterday were seemingly under the impression that doing so could result in Lewandowski leaving the room in handcuffs, but that’s not how contempt of Congress works.
On the other hand, it’s clear that Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats are now setting the stage for getting the courts to order Donald Trump’s associates to testify in fully cooperative fashion – under threat of contempt of court, which is the kind of thing that actually does get you thrown in jail. Pelosi just signaled that Corey Lewandowski has been added to the list of people who are going to jail if they don’t end up testifying. All notions of magic wands aside, this is what actual winning looks like.
