Indictments of Donald Trump regarding his attempt to overturn the 2020 election and his retention of classified information are “exquisite … beautiful and intricate”, the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi said.
“The indictments against the president are exquisite,” Pelosi, 83 and a regular antagonist of the 77-year-old former president, told New York magazine in an interview published on Monday.
“They’re beautiful and intricate, and they probably have a better chance of conviction than anything that I would come up with.”
Pelosi’s words to New York magazine seemed likely to prompt a response from Trump, with whom she frequently clashed when she was speaker and he was in the Oval Office. In one high-profile incident, in February 2020, Pelosi famously tore up a Trump speech, after his State of the Union address.
Pelosi also told the magazine that if Trump were to win the Republican nomination and the 2024 election against Joe Biden, “it would be a criminal enterprise in the White House”.
“Don’t even think of that,” she said. “Don’t think of the world being on fire. It cannot happen, or we will not be the United States of America.”
Despite 78 criminal indictments in total, including 34 over his hush-money payments to a porn star, and the likelihood of more over his election subversion in Georgia, Trump is the clear frontrunner in the Republican primary.
Denying wrongdoing and claiming political persecution, he enjoys a 30-plus point lead in national averages and clear advantages in early voting states.
In general election polling, he generally leads Biden.
Pelosi also oversaw two impeachments of Trump and the House committee that investigated the January 6 insurrection.
Stepping down as speaker but remaining in Congress, she has not let up on Trump.
Last week, the California congresswoman told MSNBC that Trump looked like a “scared puppy” when he arrived in court in Washington to face four charges related to his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
Trump, who has called Pelosi “crazy” and an “animal”, denied being scared.
In a characteristically extreme response, he also called the former speaker “really quite vicious … a Wicked Witch … a sick and demented psycho who will someday live in HELL!”
Speaking to New York magazine, Pelosi called Trump’s Washington arraignment a “triumph for the truth”.
She would not predict if Trump would be convicted. But she also said: “When we saw what he did on January 6, I knew that was a crime … I know he committed a crime that day.”
