Nancy Pelosi hints at tossing Donald Trump’s obstructors in jail

| 9:20 pm EDT May 8, 2019
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This morning, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi made her strongest pro-impeachment remarks to date, when she stated that Donald Trump is making the case for his own impeachment, and quipping that he’s becoming “becoming self-impeachable.” During this same public event, she made a remark that got less attention at the time, but it comes into clearer focus now that the House Judiciary Committee has voted to hold William Barr in contempt of Congress.

The big question is what the Democrats are going to do to Barr and other obstructors as legal punishment after they’re held in contempt. Various House Democrats have floated various options, all of which have some degree of legal precedent, but Democratic House leaders have been holding their real plan close to the vest. However, Nancy Pelosi just gave away something – though her words are open to interpretation.

Pelosi said today that “we do have a little jail down in the basement of the Capitol, but if we were arresting all the people in the administration, we would have an overcrowded jail situation – and I’m not for that.” Let’s see if we can parse what she’s really telegraphing here. Obviously she’s injecting some humor into this. But we don’t think she’s saying she’s against putting Trump’s people in jail; we think she’s merely quipping that she’s opposed to overcrowded jails.

She’s right in the sense that by all accounts, the Capitol jail is just a tiny holding cell that could only be used to give an uncooperative witness a few hours to cool off, not to lock someone up indefinitely – let alone lock multiple people up. If the House keeps holding Donald Trump’s people in contempt and does decide to start arresting some or all of them, it would need to set up some kind of de facto jail facility for them, perhaps at a nearby hotel.

People are parsing Nancy Pelosi’s words in different ways when it comes to this remark. But the bottom line is that she’s talking about jailing Donald Trump’s people at all – even if half jokingly – and she’s not completely shooting down the idea. Pelosi doesn’t tend to mess around. Nor does she tend to give away her gameplan in advance. Why would she let Trump know what’s coming?