Nancy Pelosi has accused US Attorney General William Barr of going "rogue" in the Justice Department's handling of a whistleblower report that President Donald Trump solicited a political favor from Ukraine's president that could help him get re-elected.
The Democratic House leader, who launched an impeachment inquiry on Tuesday against Mr Trump, has accused the Trump administration of trying to cover up the whistleblower complaint.
Democrats have criticised Mr Barr for not recusing himself from matters related to the whistleblower complaint prompted by a call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on 25 July.
"He's gone rogue," Ms Pelosi told MSNBC in an interview.
According to a summary of the call released by the White House, Mr Trump asked Mr Zelenskiy to work with Mr Barr and his personal lawyer Rudolph Giuliani, who was pressing the Ukrainians to investigate matters related to former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
Hunter Biden served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company when Mr Biden was in office.
Mr Biden is the front-runner in the Democratic race to challenge President Trump in the November 2020 presidential election.
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The complaint, which was made public yesterday, described how White House officials removed an electronic record of Mr Trump's call with Mr Zelenskiy from the computer server where such records are normally kept to one reserved for highly classified intelligence matters.
Ms Pelosi criticised Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, who testified before the House Intelligence Committee yesterday, for notifying the White House and the Justice Department of the whistleblower complaint.
The law requires such complaints to be turned over to Congress.
Mr Maguire said he went to the White House first because he thought calls involving President Trump could be protected by executive privilege.
Mr Pelosi said: "I think where they're going is a cover-up of the cover-up.
"To have a Justice Department to go so rogue, well they have been for a while and not it just makes matters worse."
She added that Mr Maguire "broke the law" by not going to Congress first.
Mr Trump continued his attacks on one of his biggest Democratic critics in Congress, Adam Schiff, who is chairman of the House Intelligence committee that will lead impeachment proceedings, which he calls a witch hunt.
"I am calling for him to immediately resign from Congress based on this fraud!" President Trump said on Twitter.
