House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and party leaders fear that appearing overeager to oust the president could blow back on Democrats and damage their 2020 White House chances. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Congress Pelosi tries to buy Mueller time 'We must wait to see the entire picture and then engage the American people about how we go forward,' the incoming House speaker told POLITICO.

Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her top allies are trying to stamp out the impeachment chatter spurred by a rapid-fire series of revelations that have brought special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe ever closer to the Oval Office.

Their goal: Give Mueller space and time to finish his work before considering impeachment proceedings while satisfying the Democrats’ burning desire to aggressively investigate President Donald Trump in the meantime.


“We must wait to see the entire picture and then engage the American people about how we go forward as a nation,” Pelosi told POLITICO in a statement. “We must protect the integrity of the Mueller investigation, so that the American people can get the full truth.”

For now, Pelosi seems to be pulling off the balancing act. Progressive Democrats who voted to begin an impeachment debate last year are now calling for patience. House staffers met with the special counsel’s office earlier this month to sort out which witnesses they could begin calling in 2019 without causing any problems. Democratic leaders are planning oversight hearings starting in January to highlight any White House attempts to interfere with Mueller’s work.

"It becomes harder and harder to make the case that this president hasn’t committed impeachable offenses. However, that information still has to get out to the American people," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington state, a member of the Judiciary Committee and one of the roughly 60 Democrats who voted to begin impeachment debates last year.

“You really stand to lose something if you try to move impeachment before you have everything on the table,” added Jayapal, also a leader of the Democrats’ progressive wing, in an interview. "We don’t have everything on the table yet.”

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Party leaders, including Pelosi and incoming Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler of New York, fear that appearing overeager to use their new levers of power to begin the process of removing Trump from office could blow back on Democrats and damage their chances to win the White House in 2020.

Pelosi, Nadler and many other Democrats want to see more from Mueller before committing to anything on impeachment — and they’re particularly sensitive about doing anything that would be seen as either undercutting Mueller or making the former FBI director appear to be in league with Democrats.

Top Democratic aides say they can already envision the @realDonaldTrump tweets that expand from attacks on Mueller and his “17 Angry Democrats” into a much broader attack lumping in the House members who are sending subpoenas to his top aides, business associates and family members, not to mention trying to pry loose his personal tax returns.

"My hope is that we would be very careful not to take any action which would interfere or disrupt in any way the ongoing investigation of the special counsel," said Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), who sits on the Judiciary Committee and did not vote to begin impeachment debate last year. "It's been reported that he's nearing conclusions. I do think it's important for us to await that report and not do anything that would slow that down or impede it in any way."

Part of the challenge is just maintaining patience.

Federal prosecutors have already said the president — identified in court filings as "Individual-1" — directed his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, to buy the silence of adult film actress Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, who both claimed to have had affairs with Trump, in the final weeks of the 2016 election. The revelation essentially made Trump an unindicted co-conspirator after Cohen pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws over the payments.

But some Democrats warned that the hush-money scandal alone shouldn't justify impeachment.

"If we’re only talking about payments to porn stars, we shouldn’t overserve the public with a sugary appetizer," said California Rep. Eric Swalwell, an outspoken Trump critic who serves on the House Judiciary and Intelligence panels. "There’s much more alarming conduct out there that we should investigate."

Indeed, new investigative fronts seem to appear almost daily, and members and aides say they must keep adjusting their oversight plans accordingly.

This past week brought yet another new — and potentially expansive — area of investigation into Trump world: news reports suggesting prosecutors are pursuing allegations that foreign money from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere was secretly funneled into Trump's inaugural committee and a super PAC supporting him.

The situation surrounding Mueller’s probe is also constantly changing, with open questions about who oversees the investigation, how quickly it will wrap up and whether the president will try to fire the special counsel.

“Protecting the special counsel investigation from presidential interference is key to ensuring that the American people get the answers they deserve,” Pelosi said in her statement to POLITICO. “We are at a critical moment for our country. Preserving the integrity of our institutions and democracy is our obligation.”

Party members say they expect to come across as supersensitive, but they want to avoid charges of hypocrisy after spending the past 19 months castigating Trump and his Republican allies for anything that was seen as meddling with the special counsel.

The plan is to stay in close contact with Mueller’s team. Appearing on MSNBC earlier this month, Nadler said his panel would keep Mueller apprised of its work “to make sure we’re not, by accident … stepping on the investigation in any way, because we are dependent on that investigation to give us a lot of the facts.”

A senior Democratic aide told POLITICO that Mueller’s hard-nosed lead congressional liaison would speak up if anyone on Capitol Hill made a move that meddled with the ongoing investigation. “I have no doubt if we were about to cross a red line in any public way, Stephen Kelly would show up in my office and tell me about it,” the staffer said.

House Democrats know they face other pressure points, too. Their party’s 2020 presidential candidates are likely to start lining up soon after the start of the new year, and their stance on impeachment is a likely litmus test for some progressives.

Republicans are also eager to exploit the earliest whiff of Democratic overreach, while Trump himself has warned of violent consequences if anyone tried to remove him from the White House.

“It’s hard to impeach somebody who hasn’t done anything wrong and who’s created the greatest economy in the history of our country,” Trump told Reuters in an Oval Office interview last week. “I’m not concerned, no. I think that the people would revolt if that happened.”

Rep. Elijah Cummings indicated Sunday that he wants his panel to hear from Michael Cohen. | Susan Walsh/AP Photo

Some of the Democrats’ provocations are of their own making. Asked about the hush-money scheme at the center of Cohen’s guilty plea, California Rep. Adam Schiff, the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told CBS News this month that Trump “may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time.”

Nadler, who has long signaled plans to dive headfirst into all the tentacles of the Russia investigation, said in a CNN interview that if Trump violated campaign finance laws — which would likely require proof that the candidate was aware that the hush-money payments skirted regulations — it “would be an impeachable offense.”

But, the New York Democrat quickly added, “Whether they’re important enough to justify an impeachment is a different question.”

In the meantime, Nadler and other Democratic leaders are lining up an aggressive schedule for when they take control in January. Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the incoming House Oversight chairman, said Sunday on CNN that he’s trying to arrange for public testimony next month from Cohen before the president’s ex-lawyer begins a three-year prison sentence.

Cummings wants Cohen to “tell the American public what he has been saying to Mueller and others, without interfering with the Mueller investigation.”

The Judiciary Committee’s first hearing next month is expected to center around testimony from acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker, who took on oversight of the Mueller probe after Attorney General Jeff Sessions was fired in November. Other sessions are planned to examine interactions on the Russia probe between Trump’s White House and his Justice Department.

The impeachment dilemma facing Democrats isn’t a new one for the party in power in Congress. Pelosi beat back Democratic calls for President George W. Bush’s impeachment when she became speaker after the 2006 midterms. She also saw first-hand how Republicans intent on impeaching President Bill Clinton before the 1998 midterms ended up defying historical norms and losing seats in that election, while the Democrats’ public approval ratings soared in the wake of the proceedings.

“She knows the lessons well,” said Rick Tyler, a former top adviser to Newt Gingrich and Ted Cruz. “I think she’s going to play her cards very well. She knows what her hand is. Her caucus needs to trust her. She does know what she’s doing here. She needs to rein in the impeach-at-all-cost crowd.”