Nancy Pelosi jokes that so many people in the Trump administration deserve to be locked up that there isn't enough room in jail

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) speaks about the first 100 days of the 116th Congress during an interview with Robert Costa at the Washington Post, on May 8, 2019 in Washington, DC.

• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked Wednesday how Democrats would respond to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin's refusal to give Trump's tax returns to Congress. 
• The Democrat said she favors fighting obstructive Trump officials in court, rather than use Congressional powers to jail them in the Capitol. 
• "We do have a little jail down in the basement of the Capitol, but if we were arresting all of the people in the administration we would have an overcrowded jail situation," she said. "And I'm not for that."
• The barred room under the Capitol is not actually a jail, but the Capitol Police does have the means to detain people elsewhere.
• The comments come amid an escalating struggle between congressional Democrats and the White House. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday joked that so many Trump aides are in contempt of Congress that there isn't enough room in the Capitol's jail to hold them all. 

Pelosi was asked at a Washington Post Live event how Democrats will respond to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin's refusal Tuesday to hand over tax records for President Donald Trump.

It came after Mnuchin ignored a deadline set by the House Ways and Means Committee to provide six years of Trump's tax returns.

The California Democrat told reporters that Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richards Neale favors fighting administration officials who refuse their requests via the courts system.

She said it was a better alternative to using Congressional powers to detain those in contempt of its requests and jail them in the Capitol. 

Host Robert Costa, a politics reporter for the Post, asked: "Could you hold the Secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin in contempt? Some Democrats have even raised the prospect of arresting the Treasury Secretary if he does not comply with congressional demands."

Pelosi responded: "We do have a little jail down in the basement of the Capitol, but if we were arresting all of the people in the administration we would have an overcrowded jail situation. And I'm not for that."

Under a little-known law, upheld by the Supreme Court in 1821, Congress has the power to arrest and detain witnesses who refuse to comply with its requests.

The last time Congress jailed someone this way was in 1934, when William McCracken, an official in President Herbert Hoover's administration, was tried and jailed by Congress for impeding a congressional probe. 

Pelosi's claim that there is a jail under the Capitol is actually a myth.

The building does house a barred-crypt, intended as a tomb for George Washington, which is often mistake for a jail cell.

The Capitol Police does have a holding cell, but it is in a different building.

Pelosi's remarks came hours before the Democrat-led House Judiciary Committee voted to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress for refusing to hand over the unredacted report by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. 

The vote escalated the battle between the Trump administration and House Democrats seeking wielding their oversight powers and requesting testimony and information from administration officials.

Asked whether Congress would consider impeaching Barr if he refuses to comply with their request, Pelosi would not rule it out. 

"Nothing is ever off the table," she told reporters.