AUGUSTA — Gov. Paul LePage won’t face a criminal investigation for threatening to withhold funding from a nonprofit that hired House Speaker Mark Eves, said Attorney General Janet Mills and another Democratic prosecutor in a Tuesday letter.

But that letter to three legislators who are pursuing impeachment charges against LePage — Reps. Jeffrey Evangelos, I-Friendship, Ben Chipman, D-Portland, and Charlotte Warren, D-Hallowell — doesn’t change their plans, said one of them.

The three lawmakers requested an investigation of the Republican governor earlier this month, but Mills and Kennebec County District Attorney Maeghan Maloney rejected it in a letter, saying after a review of the law and facts of the case, there’s “not a basis at this time for us to pursue a criminal investigation.”

In an interview, Evangelos criticized Mills, saying there’s a “lack of courage in Augusta to confront the realities of what we’re dealing with.”

“We obviously disagree with her decision,” he said. “It doesn’t change our plans for impeachment. In fact, it makes impeachment more certain.”