House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board that Hillary Clinton must be elected by a landslide to stop congressional investigations and a potential impeachment effort.
The Chronicle’s “Voter Guide” already endorses Clinton and most progressive candidates in California, but Pelosi may fear that ongoing investigations into the Clintons could metastasize into something much larger.
Pelosi protested to the reliably liberal editorialists on October 28, the day news broke that the FBI is re-opening its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server, that “Donald Trump proved so grossly ill-prepared to talk about the issues, so dismissive of values embedded in the Constitution, and so eager to fan the passions of racial and religious resentments in ways not seen since the candidacy of segregationist George Wallace in 1968.”
Pelosi predicted that there would be continued gridlock in Washington if Hillary Clinton is elected president, but only because “Republicans have set the table for obstruction” by promising years of investigations, government shutdowns and even impeachment proceedings.
Pelosi says her only hope now is that “Hillary’s victory will be of such size that that might be a check on [Republicans’] exuberance to have years of investigation.”
Potentially more risky for Democrats, former congressman Anthony Weiner, on whose laptops the new emails were found, chose to cooperate voluntarily with the FBI and the Department of Justice in the re-opened Hillary Clinton email investigation.
Weiner’s motivation to turn over the evidence without a subpoena may have been to avoid criminal charges in a case involving “explicit communications with [an] out-of-state teen,” according to a New York Post report based on law enforcement sources,.
According to top rated New York Criminal Defense Attorney Steve Raiser, if Weiner is prosecuted for endangering the welfare of a child by participating in an online affair with a teenager, he could be convicted of a criminal “Class A” misdemeanor, which is punishable by up to one year in jail. But if he had intercourse with a minor, “he could be looking at 5 to 25 years.”
Ms. Pelosi knows that a separate, joint FBI-Justice Department probe of the Clinton Foundation is being led by Preet Bharara, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Pelosi should also be aware that, as law enforcement sources told CNN, Bharara pushed in September for a subpoena of Weiner’s cell phone and other records.