Karl Rove said Rep. Nancy Pelosi was "dead wrong" when she suggested Wednesday that she could have had him arrested.
"The only way I could have been arrested is if the House adopted the resolution, which it did not," the Republican operative and former adviser to President George W. Bush told Fox News on Wednesday night.
"So, it's nice to know that Speaker Pelosi wanted to have me arrested. It's nice to know that she thinks she had the power to, but we're still a nation of laws and she has no authority to do so and had she attempted to arrest on any of the number times that I was in and out of the Capitol, without a resolution passed by the entire House of Representatives, she would have been up the proverbial creek without the proverbial paddle."
Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House, made her comments Wednesday after House Republicans moved to pursue contempt of Congress charges against Attorney General Eric Holder.
“I could have arrested Karl Rove on any given day,” the California Democrat told reporters. “I’m not kidding. There’s a prison here in the Capitol. If we had spotted him in the Capitol, we could have arrested him.”
The former House Speaker said while "any number" of charges could have been brought against Rove, "there were some specific ones for his being in contempt of Congress.”
Rove said Pelosi was guilty of speaking in hyperbole.
"You know, she sounds a little bit like Inspector Clouseau and a little bit [like] the Mad Red Queen, but Speaker Pelosi was dead wrong in her assertion today and I'm sure she had a good laugh and it's nice to know that she dreams of slapping me in her own personal jail. But she didn't have any authority to do it," Rove said.
