House Speaker Nancy Pelosi might not send the articles of impeachment passed Wednesday to the Senate for one reason, and one reason only. And it isn’t because she’s worried the process won’t be “fair.”
She’s worried instead, and likely knows with certainty, that the GOP-controlled Senate will either dismiss the charges or vote to acquit the president.
That’s that subtext to her comments on the matter, and that’s the assessment of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Pelosi, he said, is afraid to put her weak case not just in front of the Senate but in front of the American people.
Having surrendered to the nutters in her party who demanded the impeachment, Pelosi is sailing between Scylla and Charybdis.
She can’t send the impeachment to the Senate because she’ll lose. But she can’t put the matter on hold forever.
McConnell vs. Pelosi
Speaking after the House voted to OK articles of impeachment that falsely allege President Trump abused his power and obstructed Congress, Pelosi confessed her fear, without saying so, that the Senate won’t convict.
She delivered that confession under the guise of her concern that the “process” be “fair.” She’s not sure of that, and so the House must delay sending the charges to the other side of the Capitol.
“We cannot name managers until we see what the process is on the Senate side,” Pelosi said. Managers are the congressmen who present the case that the president must be convicted and removed from office.
“So far we haven’t seen anything that looks fair to us,” the leftist from California continued. “So hopefully it will be fair. And when we see what that is, we’ll send our managers.”
Pelosi would not answer questions about whether she was entertaining an indefinite hold on the articles — one that could prevent a trial from taking place before the next presidential election.
“We’re not having that discussion,” she said, adding that it “would have been our intention” to send the articles forthwith, “but we’ll see what happens over there.”
She continued: “We’re not sending it tonight because it’s difficult to determine who the managers would be until we see the arena in which we will be participating.”
This morning on the Senate floor, McConnell flatly accused Pelosi of cowardice in battle, NBC News reported.
McConnell denounced the House vote as “the most rushed, least thorough, and most unfair … in modern history.”
No wonder, he said, “House Democrats may be too afraid to even transmit their shoddy work product to the Senate.”
“Looks like the prosecutors are getting cold feet in front of the entire country and second-guessing whether they even want to go to trial.”
Delay means the “allegations are unproven,” McConnell said, reminding his colleagues that the “framers built the Senate to provide stability…. The Senate exists for moments like this.”
“If the Senate blesses this slapdash impeachment, if we say from now on this is enough, then we invite an endless parade of impeachment trials,” he said.
Graham and Trump
Senator Lindsey Graham, GOP chieftain of the Senate Judiciary Committee, unleashed a Trump-like tweetstorm.
“If House Dems refuse to send Articles of Impeachment to the Senate for trial it would be a breathtaking violation of the Constitution, an act of political cowardice, and fundamentally unfair” to the president, he wrote.
Not allowing the Senate to act on approved Articles of Impeachment becomes Constitutional extortion and creates chaos for the presidency.
It also sets in motion a tremendous threat to our Constitutional system of checks and balances….
Democrats have finally realized they have a very WEAK case which NEVER should have been brought forward to begin with.
Nancy Pelosi’s threat to refuse to transmit the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate for disposition is an incredibly dumb and dangerous idea.
There is a reason one person can’t be Speaker of the House and Senate Majority Leader at the same time!
Trump tweeted the same message: “I got Impeached last night without one Republican vote being cast with the Do Nothing Dems on their continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in American history. Now the Do Nothing Party want to Do Nothing with the Articles & not deliver them to the Senate, but it’s Senate’s call!”
If Pelosi is worried about whether Senate Republicans can be “fair” when they control the chamber and try a president, she might recall what happened in 1999 when she was still an unknown, insignificant figure in Congress.
After the GOP-controlled House passed two articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, one for perjury and the other for obstruction, the 55-45 GOP-controlled Senate acquitted him on the first article and failed to convict on the second.
Ten Republicans voted not guilty on the perjury charge. Five voted likewise on obstruction.
The difference between now and then, of course, is this: Clinton was guilty. Trump isn’t.
Photo: AP Images
R. Cort Kirkwood is a long-time contributor to The New American and a former newspaper editor
