Impeachment stalemate continues.
WASHINGTON >> Sen. Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, insisted Wednesday that Speaker Nancy Pelosi accept his terms for President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial and promptly deliver the charges from the House, as a growing number of Senate Democrats signaled they, too, were eager to begin the proceeding.
A day after he announced he had the votes to conduct a trial without agreeing to Democrats’ demands for witnesses, McConnell said the House had no choice now but to end “shameless game-playing” and transmit the two articles of impeachment against Trump that it approved last month.
“There will be no haggling with the House over Senate procedure,” McConnell, R-Ky., said on the Senate floor.
Pelosi has been withholding the charges in a bid to help Democrats press their case that any fair trial must include the guarantee of new witnesses and documents. On Tuesday evening, she demanded McConnell
make public his proposed rules for the proceeding before she delivered the articles.
Citing the heightened tensions in the Middle East — where Iran fired missiles at U.S. forces in Iraq early Wednesday — the Senate leader charged the speaker was playing a dangerous game on impeachment at the worst possible time.
“At the very same time a global crisis was unfolding in real time, she published another ‘Dear colleague’ letter saying she intends to keep our commander in chief in this limbo indefinitely,” McConnell said.
McConnell’s objective in the current battle is to bring about a speedy acquittal of the president, belittling the House’s case in the process. Pelosi, having carefully orchestrated the impeachment vote in the House, does not want to allow the Senate to quickly bury the matter without delving into additional witness accounts or documents. And if she cannot force McConnell to agree to those terms, she is determined at least to convince the public that the Senate trial is illegitimate — and, by extension, that Trump’s acquittal was rigged from the start.
The charges stem from a House inquiry that concluded Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate his political rivals in a bid to boost his reelection campaign and then sought to conceal his actions from legislative oversight.