Nancy Pelosi’s office today suggested the former Speaker of the House never meant to imply she knows something about Newt Gingrich that no one else knows. In other words, she has no new dirt. Her spokesman claims that, by her teasing comments, Pelosi just meant to say her intimate familiarity with his past convinces her that he will never be president. The Hill reports:

“The ‘something’ Leader Pelosi knows is that Newt Gingrich will not be President of the United States. She made that clear last night,” Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said in a statement.

“Leader Pelosi previously made a reference to the extensive amount of information that is in the public record, including the comprehensive committee report with which the public may not be fully aware,” Hammill said.

Pelosi made headlines on Tuesday when she told CNN Gingrich would not be president, and that “there’s something I know.”

So, Pelosi wasn’t bluffing per se — but she was playing a little mind game by implying that what she knows about Gingrich — all of which knowledge is already available to the inquiring public — should be enough to disqualify him from the presidency. In fact, though, “the extensive amount of information that is in the public record … [of] which the public may not be fully aware” ultimately shows that Gingrich was ousted from the speakership for a presumption of guilt, but was actually not guilty of breaking any laws.

Gotta say: This information from Pelosi’s office gives a special luster to what Allah wrote would be the natural thought of any “febrile political junkie.” Pelosi very plausibly could have made the comments she did knowing conservatives would rally around Gingrich because of them. Then again, I’m not sure Pelosi is that smart; she seems to have shot from the hip with these remarks, leaving her office to clean up the mess. If she didn’t have some sly motive in mind, then she might have just attacked Gingrich with typical Democratic knee-jerk defensiveness that sees any rising conservative as a threat.