Gingrich Criticizes Pelosi Over Threat to Air Ethics Charges

(Newsroom America) -- Republican presidential frontrunner Newt Gingrich hit back at House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Monday over hints she would release damaging information regarding past ethics charges against the former House speaker if he became the GOP nominee.

Gingrich, just out of a meeting in New York City with real estate mogul Donald Trump, suggested House members bring charges against Pelosi, herself a onetime speaker, if she goes ahead with airing aspects of the 1990s probe.

"I want to thank Speaker Pelosi for what I regard as an early Christmas gift," Gingrich told reporters. "It tells you how capriciously political that committee was that she was on it. It tells you how tainted the outcome was that she was on it."

Pelosi told the Web site Talking Points Memo last week she would welcome Gingrich as the Republican nominee, hinting she would release incriminating information related to past ethics charges in which she helped investigate.

"One of these days we’ll have a conversation about Newt Gingrich," she told TPM. "I know a lot about him. I served on the investigative committee that investigated him, four of us locked in a room in an undisclosed location for a year. A thousand pages of his stuff."

When pressed, she declined to elaborate. "When the time is right," she said.

Nadeam Elshami, a spokesman for Pelosi, said she “was clearly referring to the extensive amount of information that is in the public record, including the comprehensive committee report with which the public may not be fully aware."

Pelosi sat on a panel that looked into charges Gingrich used tax exempt contributions for political purposes, then misled congressional investigators looking into the matter.

The allegations stemmed from a college course he taught from 1993-1995 linked to GOPAC, his political action committee, in violation of federal laws barring the use of tax-exempt funds for partisan purposes.

For his part, Gingrich turned over 1 million pages of documents to investigators and said in the end most of the charges were "repudiated as false." He said one mistake he made was "a letter written by a lawyer that I didn’t read carefully."

Gingrich on Monday said he hoped the House would "immediately condemn" Pelosi "if she uses any material that was gathered while she was on the Ethics Committee."

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