“It couldn’t possibly be true because that is not how our system works,” Pelosi said during a Christian Science Monitor breakfast in Washington.

“We do not investigate, through a FISA court, Americans — here or abroad.”

Pelosi noted that she helped redesign the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act's court system. The clandestine court, created by the post-9/11 legislation, oversees surveillance requests from the nation’s intelligence agencies.

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“There’s much more accountability now,” she said.

“I’m not even sure he understands the whole FISA thing. … Maybe he does. But it’s complicated. And if he does, good for him. That would be one [thing he understands].”

Pelosi said Trump’s tweets were designed simply to energize his conservative base and distract from his campaign's connections to the Kremlin.

“I think that he crossed a line with that, but it’s red meat for his base. They believe almost anything that he says,” Pelosi said. “As he said, he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and nobody would even care. I think this is one example of that. He’s shooting the truth on Fifth Avenue.”

Trump last week stirred a furor when he accused his predecessor of "tapping" the phones in Trump Tower just before his election victory.

“This is McCarthyism!” he tweeted on March 4.

The president did not offer any evidence or further details, and White House spokesman Sean Spicer has since clarified that the administration has “no reason” to believe Trump “is the target of any investigation whatsoever.”

The episode reportedly outraged FBI Director James Comey, who asked the Justice Department to shoot down Trump’s claim with a public statement, according to The New York Times . The DOJ has refused to do so.

Pelosi on Friday said Comey should make that public statement himself.

“Theoretically, do I think a director of the FBI who knows for a fact that something is mythology but misleading to the American people — and he should set the record straight?” she asked, choosing her words carefully. “Yes, I do think he should say that publicly.”

Pelosi made the comments a day after meeting with Comey. The FBI director was on Capitol Hill for a pair of confidential meetings with top leaders and Intelligence Committee heads from both parties and both chambers.

Pelosi declined to comment on the substance of her meeting. But many Democrats are openly distrustful of Comey’s politics after he announced, just days before the presidential election, that his agents had potentially found new evidence related to the FBI investigation of Clinton's private email server. His statement caused a media firestorm, but the discovery turned up nothing new.

Pelosi on Friday also amplified Democrats’ calls for an outside investigation into potential Trump-Russia ties.

“What do the Russians have on Donald Trump?” she asked. “What are the political, personal and financial connections to Russia? We want to know.”

The Democrats are demanding that Trump to release his tax returns — a tradition upheld by presidents for more than 40 years, but one which Trump has rejected — and Pelosi on Friday repeated that call.

“I don’t understand why our Republican colleagues are so afraid of the truth. … They have just come to the defense of this president,” she said. “Two-thirds of the American people think differently, and we will be putting them to that vote each week as we lead up to April 15.”