White House legal team said to be researching impeachment

Lawyers at the White House have begun to study the impeachment process in preparation for any potential efforts to remove US President Donald Trump from office, CNN reported Friday.

Although White House officials still consider an attempt to impeach Trump unlikely, the White House Counsel’s Office is said to be seeking the advice of legal experts on how a potential impeachment bid would move forward, according to the CNN report.

A White House official told CNN in response that the report was “not true,” while an unnamed attorney cited in the report said he did not believe White House Counsel Don McGahn would have allowed members of his legal team to research impeachment.

Despite calls for Trump’s impeachment from some corners, Republicans are believed to still back the president, while the majority of Democrats have not yet joined calls for the US president’s ouster.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Friday said that she was not encouraging — or discouraging — such talk.

“I’m not feeding the flame of any impeachment talk,” said Pelosi, who’s spent three decades in Congress. “But members are going to do what they’re going to do, and their constituents think that the behavior of the president is appalling.”

Pelosi also said that Trump has made himself “very vulnerable personally” amid investigations of his campaign ties with Russia, pointing to his reported request to now-fired FBI Director James Comey to lay off an investigation of Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser.

“I think the Flynn thing is where the president is very vulnerable personally,” Pelosi told The Associated Press in an interview in her office. “If the president in fact asked Comey to let up on … Flynn — you don’t do that.”

The California Democrat also questioned Trump’s fitness for office and said if anyone does it, “the person who’s going to impeach Donald Trump is Donald Trump.”

Pelosi also reacted to news being reported by The New York Times that Trump told Russian diplomats in his office a day after firing Comey that the FBI director was “a nut job” and the pressure he faced because of Russia was now “taken off.”

“I think every day the president gives us more reason to believe that he does not respect the office that he holds. This is a ridiculous statement for him to make,” Pelosi said. “Again it’s elevating the Russians as his confidante at the expense of our justice system in our country.”

Trump told Russian diplomats last week his firing of “nut job” James Comey had eased the pressure on him, even as the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation had moved into the White House, according to reports Friday that pursued the president as he began his maiden foreign trip.

White House hopes that Trump could leave scandalous allegations at home were crushed in a one-two punch of revelations that landed shortly after his departure. A Washington Post report, citing anonymous sources familiar with the matter, said a senior Trump adviser is now considered a “person of interest” in the law enforcement investigation into whether Trump’s campaign associates coordinated with Russia in an effort to sway the 2016 election.

And The New York Times reported that the president had told Russian officials he felt the dismissal of his FBI director had relieved “great pressure” on him. The White House has said the firing was unrelated to the FBI’s Russia investigation.

Late Friday, the Senate intelligence committee announced that Comey had agreed to testify at an open hearing at an undetermined date after Memorial Day.

Comey will certainly be asked about encounters that precipitated his firing, including a January dinner in which, Comey has told associates, Trump asked for his loyalty, and his alleged request to stop the Flynn probe.