- Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to tell her husband when she's retiring, according to a new book
- Paul Pelosi reportedly told California Gov. Gavin Newsom this during the spring of last year.
- Pelosi is just the second House Speaker to reclaim the gavel after losing it.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wouldn't even tell her husband Paul when she plans to retire, according to a forthcoming book.
"In the spring of 2021, her husband, Paul, had told the governor of California [Gavin Newsom] over dinner that even he did not know how long she would choose to stay on as speaker," New York Times political reporters Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns write in "This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future."
In 2019, Pelosi became the first House Speaker to return to the job since Sam Rayburn retook the gavel in the 1950s. The first woman ever to be speaker, Pelosi has served in Congress for over three decades and has led House Democrats since 2003. The 81-year-old faced pushback from some of her colleagues and eventually agreed to limit herself to just four years as speaker before her 2019 return to power.
In other reported comments in the book, Pelosi is said to have privately vented about just how arduous it was to try to become speaker again. A Pelosi spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Paul Pelosi is no stranger to the headlines himself. He is one of the most prolific stock traders connected to a member of Congress, according to a lengthy Insider investigation on lawmakers and their spouses' financial dealings. He has traded millions of dollars worth of stock investments that the speaker must by law disclose.
Republicans and Democrats have used Paul Pelosi's trades as evidence that a ban on stock trading must be extended to the spouses of lawmakers. Under pressure, Pelosi signaled an openness to a ban on trades but still takes offense to the implication that there's something untoward about lawmakers engaging in the free market.