Should Pelosi Be Prosecuted For Ripping Up Trump Speech? President Says She Broke Law

President Trump said Friday House Speaker Nancy Pelosi broke the law by ripping up his State of the Union speech as the address ended.

Pelosi stood up and ripped two stacks of papers in half as the president finished his remarks Tuesday night.

“She broke the law,” Trump said in answer to a reporter’s question as he headed for Charlotte, North Carolina, and an appearance at Central Piedmont Community College for the Opportunity Now Summit.

There is a federal law that prohibits anyone from mutilating “any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States.” It’s unlikely a copy of a speech would be covered.

Pelosi said ripping up the speech was the polite thing to do considering the alternatives. Republicans attacked Pelosi’s action as a breach of decorum.

"It was a manifesto of mistruths, of falsehoods — really dangerous to the well-being of the American people, if they believed what he said,” she told a Thursday Capitol Hill press conference, just one day after the president was acquitted by the Senate on two impeachment articles.

Pelosi said Trump had demeaned the office of president and betrayed the Constitution.

Trump, in turn, called Pelosi and fellow Democrats “evil” during a rambling, 62-minute rant at the White House Thursday.

Pelosi acknowledged her relationship with Trump has been fraught, but she said efforts still need to be made to achieve legislative goals.

Trump and Pelosi haven’t spoken since she and fellow Democrats walked out of an October White House meeting on the president’s decision to pull U.S. troops out of northern Syria.

Trump spent much of the impeachment process insulting Pelosi, calling her a third-rate politician.