Pelosi to send articles next week
Speaker moves to end impasse with Senate over impeachment process
WASHINGTON >> Speaker Nancy Pelosi alerted lawmakers Friday that she would move next week to send to the Senate articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, making a longawaited announcement that paved the way for the third presidential impeachment trial in American history.
In a letter to colleagues Friday morning, the speaker moved to end an impasse over the impeachment process that had left the president’s fate in limbo even as he navigated escalating hostilities with Iran in recent days. She did not announce which Democrats she would name to manage the case at trial, but said the House should be ready to vote to appoint them sometime next week and to formally deliver the Senate charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
“I have asked Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler to be prepared to bring to the floor next week a resolution to appoint managers and transmit articles of impeachment to the Senate,” Pelosi wrote after lawmak
ers departed the Capitol for the weekend. “I will be consulting with you at our Tuesday House Democratic Caucus meeting on how we proceed further.”
The interlude instigated by Pelosi had grown increasingly perplexing, setting Washington on edge as an impeached president and his allies in Congress, as well as Democrats, wondered when — if ever — the proceeding to try him would get underway.
Her maneuver ultimately failed to yield any concessions from Republicans on the terms of the trial, and had become untenable. Some Democrats, including the senior senator from her home state, Dianne Feinstein, wondered aloud in recent days about the point of delaying the trial, before taking back her remarks.
Through it all, Pelosi insisted that she was merely pushing for a fairer Senate proceeding after Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the majority leader, promised publicly to work hand in glove with Trump’s legal team to secure a quick acquittal. Democrats claimed the maneuver successfully spotlighted the need for
the Senate to hear from witnesses and see documents that Trump barred from the House impeachment inquiry.
As recently as Thursday, Pelosi had told reporters that she would keep her own counsel on the matter, refusing say when she would act and demanding one final time that McConnell share the precise rules for a Senate trial so she could tailor her prosecutorial team. But McConnell never appeared to even consider committing to that approach, and he said this week that he had secured the votes he needs to begin a trial on his own terms, without an agreement on witnesses or documents.
Under the timetable the speaker suggested on Friday, the Senate’s proceeding would begin promptly — as soon as Wednesday.
While Trump’s acquittal appears all but certain in the Republican-led chamber, once underway, the trial could take on a life of its own, plunging Congress, the presidency and the 2020 presidential campaign into uncertainty for weeks. Democrats have made clear they intend to force votes on the question of calling witnesses, and are pressuring Senate Republicans — particularly moderates and those who face reelection
challenges in politically competitive states — to join them in supporting the airing of more information.
“In an impeachment trial, every senator takes an oath to ‘do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws,’ ” Pelosi wrote. “Every senator now faces a choice: to be loyal to the president or the Constitution.”
The proceeding could also scramble the political picture for Democrats, confining close to half of their presidential contenders to their wooden chairs in the Senate chamber in Washington for hours on end in the critical days leading to the Iowa caucus on Feb. 3, the first contest of the primary cycle.
Though officials at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue have been preparing for weeks, Pelosi’s letter on Friday began an unofficial countdown toward opening arguments. Trump and his legal team were still sorting out who would mount his defense in the Senate chamber. And the speaker continued to assemble her own team of managers to prosecute him.
The Democratic-led House impeached Trump on Dec. 18 in a largely partyline vote charging him with abuse of power and obstruction
of Congress in connection with a scheme to pressure Ukraine to publicly investigate his domestic political rivals.
Specifically, after months of investigation and public testimony, the House concluded that Trump withheld about $400 million in military assistance and a coveted White House meeting for Ukraine as leverage to extract investigations that could bolster his reelection campaign, and then sought to conceal it from Congress with an unprecedented campaign of obstruction.
But on the night of the vote, Pelosi unexpectedly announced she would not immediately send the articles of impeachment to the Senate, in an unusual attempt to pressure the Republicanled chamber to commit to calling additional witnesses and requesting documents
Trump blocked during the House’s inquiry. A trial with no new evidence, Democrats have argued, would fundamentally abet the president’s cover-up.
Though presidential impeachment precedent is scant — the House has only charged two past presidents, Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson — Pelosi’s unforeseen move prompted debates about how much leeway the Constitution allows each chamber.
McConnell has yet to make public his precise proposed rules for the trial, but he said they would be modeled on a resolution guiding the 1999 trial of Clinton, the only modern precedent that senators adopted unanimously.
To Democrats’ dismay, that model puts off any decisions on calling witnesses or new evidence until the middle of the trial, after senators are sworn in, the House and White House present opening arguments and senators have a chance to ask written questions. Nor does it guarantee that new evidence will be included.
Democrats are closely watching a small group of moderate Republican senators who are open to calling witnesses, hoping to court their support when the time comes. With the chamber divided 53 to 47, they need four Republicans to cross party lines if they want a shot at hearing from a cadre of officials like John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, who are said to have pertinent information about the president’s actions toward Ukraine but evaded House investigators.
Complicating matters, Trump told Fox News on Friday that he would probably invoke executive privilege to try to shield Bolton’s testimony if the Senate summoned him. Trump said he had no problem with what Bolton might say, but that “for the sake of the office” of the president, he did not want to set a standard of letting a top adviser speak about his interactions with the president.
Bolton indicated in a statement this week that he would testify if subpoenaed, setting up a potential legal clash.
Even if the trial were to begin Wednesday, it could take several days to be fully organized. Officials in both chambers suggested on Friday that the heat of the trial — beginning with up to 24 hours or oral arguments per side — could begin shortly after the Jan. 20 Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday. If a majority of senators do vote to call witnesses, that could extend the proceeding by several weeks.