Hours before former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi formally launched the first impeachment investigation into former President Donald Trump in 2019, she received a call from the subject of the probe himself.
“Why are you doing that?” Trump asked, according to Pelosi in her new book, “The Art of Power.”
In the more than 20-minute back-and-forth, Pelosi described Trump as “becoming increasingly whiny by the end” and framed the conversation as “contentious” as the former president defended his actions and Pelosi explained why she planned to move forward with the investigation.
Reflecting on the phone call with CNN’s Dana Bash, Pelosi, who rarely shares details from her private conversations, said she included the specifics in the book “because it was the basis for how to go forward. He was saying, ‘It was a perfect call, it was a perfect call.’ And I was saying it was a perfectly clear call, and we will be going forward.”
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Trump communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement to CNN, “Sounds like Nancy Pelosi continues to prove herself to be a liar and a fraud. Everything that comes out of her mouth is pure garbage, just like that fake title she gives herself because she can’t stop living in the past. What a loser.”
In December 2019, the House impeached Trump on a party line vote as the result of a Democratic-led investigation into allegations that Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a phone call to investigate his political rivals while withholding US security assistance and a White House meeting. But he was acquitted in the Senate in February 2020.
During the September phone call, Pelosi said Trump claimed she would be impressed with his “lack of pressure,” that he “didn’t threaten anyone” and “there’s no reason” to impeach him.
“I’ve done a great job as president,” Trump said and, according to Pelosi, kept repeating, “It’s very, very unfair.”
Pelosi, who referenced her decades long stint on the House Intelligence Committee, said in their conversation she pointed to the need to investigate the allegations stemming from an anonymous whistleblower complaint, and added her perspective.
“I do not believe that the president (needs to directly) make a quid pro quo to intimidate a foreign leader,” Pelosi told Trump.
“I didn’t do that,” Trump replied, to which Pelosi replied, “You withheld aid, and there is an inference drawn.”
As Trump continued to claim that his call with Zelensky was “flawless,” Pelosi responded, “We’ll find out. Don’t be afraid of it.”
“This is unfair,” Trump persisted. “The call was perfect.”
In her final reply to Trump before the end of the call, Pelosi said, “That call was perfectly clear. The truth will come out.”
Pelosi said she was scheduled to call Trump, but the former president beat her to it and placed the call at 8:16 a.m. ET that morning. That day, Trump was speaking to the UN General Assembly, and during the call, Pelosi said he complained that her announcement launching the impeachment inquiry would overshadow his speech.
“I was thinking, Well, good for you. That’s what you are doing today. I’m telling you what I’m doing today,” Pelosi wrote in her book.
Once the approximately 20-minute phone call with Trump ended, Pelosi reflected, “I’ve had a lot of conversations with this man, and at the end of nearly all of them, I think, Either you are stupid, or you think that the rest of us are.”
New book describes aftermath of attack on Pelosi’s husband
In her book, Pelosi gives her most in-depth and personal recounting of the violent attack against her husband, Paul, in October 2022 that resulted in the attacker being sentenced to 30 years in prison.
When Pelosi was awakened by her security detail in Washington, DC, in the early hours that morning to be informed of what happened in their San Francisco home, she did not know whether her husband of nearly 60 years was still alive. She recounted how hectic it was trying to inform their five children who were spread out across the country what she knew so far before they could learn about it through press reports.
Pelosi shared that her youngest daughter, Alexandra, told her while they were in the ICU after the attack that she regretted her mother ever entering public service.
“If I had known what we were signing up for, if I had known this was where it was going to go, I would never have given you my blessing thirty-five years ago,” Alexandra said, according to Pelosi.
The former speaker expressed the deeply profound impact the attack on her husband has had on her and her family — how family members still avoid parts of the house where the attack happened, how Paul has never spoken about the attack with his family and the physical toll it still takes on Paul.
“Paul was not the intended target that night, but he is the one who paid and is still paying the price physically,” Pelosi wrote. “And our entire family is paying the price emotionally and traumatically.”
