Democrats in the House of Representatives rushed through a slapdash impeachment inquiry of President Trump. Party leaders refused to call witnesses that Republicans wanted, refused to wait for the courts to mediate conflicts, refused to hold a fair and comprehensive hearing of evidence from both sides.
And now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is saying that even though the two weak articles of impeachment were approved on a near party-line vote on Wednesday, she won’t pass them along to the Senate until, well, until she feels like it.
Then why the rush? Why push through two thin articles that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell calls “constitutionally incoherent”? If she’s just going to wait now, why the rush?
Pelosi said she may delay the handoff of the articles because she thinks Republicans in the Senate won’t hold a fair trial.
“We cannot name managers until we see what the process is on the Senate side,” Pelosi told reporters after the party-line vote in the House. “And I would hope that that will be soon. … So far we haven’t seen anything that looks fair to us. So hopefully it will be fair. And when we see what that is, we’ll send our managers.”
Asked if she would pledge to send the articles to the Senate soon, Pelosi said: “That would have been our intention.” But she added that “we are not having that discussion. We have done what we set out to do.”
But again, why rush the process only to withhold the articles from the Senate?
“Pelosi’s comments, which echo suggestions raised by other Democrats throughout the day, inject new uncertainty into the impeachment timetable and send the House and Senate lurching toward a potential institutional crisis,” Politico reported. “Though the House adopted two articles of impeachment charging Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of congressional investigations, it must pass a second resolution formally naming impeachment managers to present the case in the Senate. That second vehicle triggers the official transmission of articles to the Senate.”
McConnell pointed out the travesty. “Pelosi suggested that House Democrats may be too afraid to even transmit their shoddy work product to the Senate,” he said in a moving speech from the floor of the Senate on Thursday.
And McConnell blasted House Democrats as nothing more than “a politic faction of the House of Representatives has succumbed to a partisan rage.”
The Constitution’s framers, the Senate Majority Leader said, “built the Senate to provide stability … to keep partisan passions from boiling over,” adding, “Moments like this are why the United States Senate exists.”
McConnell also described Trump’s impeachment as “the most rushed, least thorough, and most unfair impeachment inquiry in modern history.”
Trump also pointed out the absurdity of Pelosi’s plan to withhold the articles from the Senate.
“Now the Do Nothing Party want to Do Nothing with the Articles & not deliver them to the Senate,” Trump wrote on Twitter Thursday morning. He claimed the timing of the trial was up to the Senate, and that if Democrats didn’t transmit the articles of impeachment “they would lose by Default!”
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!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 19, 2019
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), said: “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.”
“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 President [Trump].”
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.
— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) December 19, 2019
Graham also said: “There is a reason one person can’t be Speaker of the House and Senate Majority Leader at the same time!”
Impeachment managers must be appointed by a House resolutions, but Thursday is the last day the House will be in session until Jan. 7.
If Democrats don’t appoint managers, that means there was no need to rush through the solemn process.
And it will be clear evidence that the slapdash push to impeach the president was nothing more than purely partisan politics.
