Pelosi says the House won't impeach AG Barr: 'Let's solve our problems by going to the polls and voting on Election Day'

• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has ruled out impeaching Attorney General William Barr ahead of the November election.
• "One hundred and thirty one days from now, we will have the solution to many problems, one of them being Barr," Pelosi said Thursday in a Washington Post Live interview.
• Barr has been criticized for a series of efforts to allegedly politicize the Department of Justice.
• Barr's decisions as Attorney General were the subject of a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that the House of Representatives won't impeach Attorney General Bill Barr before this fall's presidential election.

Speaking at a Washington Post virtual event, Pelosi ruled out officially beginning impeachment proceedings against Barr, who is set to testify before the House in July.

"One hundred and thirty-one days from now, we will have the solution to many problems, one of them being Barr," she said, referring to the November 3 presidential election.

Barr has faced criticism throughout his tenure from Democrats who say he conducts his job more like Trump's personal lawyer than the US' lawyer.

Recently, Barr has been criticized for his abrupt firing of Geoffrey Berman, the now-former US Attorney for the Southern District of New York who was investigating several colleagues of President Trump.

On Wednesday, two Department of Justice whistleblowers testified before the House Judiciary Committee about what they described as improper political interference from top DOJ officials, including Barr.

One of the whistleblowers, assistant US Attorney Aaron Zelinsky, worked on the prosecution of Trump ally Roger Stone. He testified that his supervisors, including the US Attorney for the District of Columbia, overrode the prosecution team's sentencing recommendation for Stone and recommended a lesser sentence at Barr's behest.

The other, anti-trust division attorney John Elias, testified that Barr abused his power to direct the anti-trust division to aggressively go after cannabis industry mergers and acquisitions because he "did not like the nature of their underlying business."

"Anyone who saw that testimony will know that Barr is a mess and a disgrace to the Department of Justice. I've been talking about that for a while, and last year, around this time, we had a motion on the floor to hold him in civil and criminal contempt," Pelosi said.

"So he is contemptible, there is no question about that. But at this point, let's solve our problems by going to the polls and voting on election day."

—The Recount (@therecount) June 25, 2020

Jake Lahut contributed reporting.