Appearing Friday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), without evidence, claimed that “Russia has a hand” in President Donald Trump’s July discussion about U.S. military aid and Hunter Biden with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.
A partial transcript is as follows:
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Can you speak to those who may be still struggling with why [the Trump-Zelensky call] was so wrong, we’re talking about the focus of shaking down the leader of Ukraine to get information on a political opponent. By the way, having hundreds of millions of dollars in aid held up. Could you explain why this is wrong and also extremely dangerous.
HOUSE SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI: I fully appreciate the need for a President of the United States to have conversations with leaders of other countries and some of that may want to be held close to the vest as part of his job. But, I don’t think it’s part of his job to shakedown leaders of other countries using taxpayer dollars to have them do something that is in his political benefit. It’s wrong for any foreign government to interfere in our elections and you have the President of the United States asking for that. Now we’re engaged in a cover-up of that cover-up. Two wrongs do not make a right and they know how wrong it is.
I think Russia has a hand in this, by the way. We saw what the Russian disruption of our election last time, their interference, 100% confidence of the intelligence community, high confidence in the intelligence community, that the Russians disrupted our election. That was wrong. The integrity of our elections is central to our democracy. So what the president did in inviting outside intervention into our election, it goes beyond the pale.