Speaker Nancy Pelosi To Get On With It. Impeachment, That Is…
United States House of Representatives [Public domain]
After a holiday recess full of rhetoric, and a first week of congressional action that amounts to basically nothing, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced she will be forwarding the Articles of Impeachment and name the Impeachment Managers next week.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday she’s preparing to send the impeachment articles to the Senate next week to start the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump.
Pelosi’s letter signals the end of the weeks-long standoff between the House and Senate over the impeachment articles, after Pelosi delayed sending the two articles of impeachment the House passed last month to the Senate while Democrats pressed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to agree to have witnesses in the trial.
“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 in a letter to her caucus. “I will be consulting with you at our Tuesday House Democratic Caucus meeting on how we proceed further.”
Pelosi’s letter means the Senate impeachment trial could begin as soon as next week. The House needs to pass a resolution naming impeachment managers before the articles are formally sent to the Senate, and the Senate will also have to take procedural steps before the trial gets underway.
It’s not clear whether Pelosi’s gambit to withhold the articles will change the trajectory of the Senate trial. Democrats have pushed for the Senate to agree to hear from witnesses as part of the trial, accusing McConnell of a cover-up for coordinating with the White House.
“Leader McConnell’s tactics are a clear indication of the fear that he and President Trump have regarding the facts of the President’s violations for which he was impeached,” Pelosi wrote Friday.
But McConnell refused to change course on the trial as the impasse dragged on, saying he would pass a resolution to establish the rules of the trial with only Republican votes and then make a decision on witnesses later.
I wonder if Bolton’s announcement has changed the calculations, because now, voting to dismiss without hearing witnesses would amount to ignoring him. But then again, I wonder if any of this changes anyone’s mind. Is anybody undecided or persuadable?Report
It’s hard to say. I’m not remotely confident enough to say whether Pelosi’s gambit yielded any benefit. Then again I also am uncertain if her gambit had any serious costs.
I can think of some pros- the media talked about her withholding the articles which did focus the conversation on McConnell’s talk about being hand in glove with the White house and refusing to hear witnesses; Bolton the evil mustache went and said he’d testify in the Senate which arguably will make it harder to just vote it through without hearings and have it over with. It seemed to rally Pelosi’s troops a bit and rattle Trump.
Costs? I dunno, it pissed off right wingers who were gonna be pissed off anyhow?Report
Well, whether Bolton testifies is not up to Bolton. Executive privilege belongs to and is exerted by the President, not his advisors, which means a judge would have to rule on whether Bolton can testify. That would create a delay, potentially a fairly long one, and I don’t think anybody in the Senate is wanting to drag things out.
Apparently Nancy may have been forced into action because members of her party were defecting, since none of them could really explain the logic behind the delay, or defend the rhetoric that impeachment had to be rushed because Trump was so dangerous, and then suddenly it was no biggie.
The idea for the delay apparently came from Watergate conspirator/double-crosser John Dean, who suggested it on CNN. John Dean is perhaps the worst possible person to give advice on impeachment.Report
I’m not sure Executive Privilege applies to impeachment, since its explicitly called out as a function in the Constitution. That aside, Bolton is no longer serving as an active adviser, and the Courts have not been deferential to those sort of claims of privilege of late. That aside, Chief Justice Roberts will sit in the chamber to adjudicate these sort of questions. Last I checked SCOTUS and its Justices are the last word on such things.Report
As I understand it 51 Senators in the Senate are the last word on such things. Roberts will just execute the rules they enact.Report
Well, I don’t think there’s any appeal to SCOTUS from the Senate procedures. The Senate is a co-equal branch. The Chief will preside as judge and as such has the power to hold subpoenaed witnesses in contempt.
But the whole scenario of Bolton both being called and refusing to testify seems unlikely. The most likely scenario is that he isn’t called, as far as I can tell. Because the Senate votes in rules that allow a preliminary vote for dismissal (the rules for Clinton and Johnson allowed this, too!) and they vote along party lines to do exactly that.Report
Executive privilege certainly does apply, and was a major component of the Watergate and Clinton hearings. It doesn’t matter if Bolton is or is not currently employed in the role of advisor. The privilege is part of the separation of powers, protecting key Presidential rights and responsibilities, so that the White House isn’t just a puppet of the legislative branch, with Congress looking over their shoulders and approving or denying every decision and piece of advice.
As Justice Burger said during all the Watergate related cases,, the privilege is strongest regarding foreign policy. Well, Bolton was the foreign policy advisor, and the topic under scrutiny was a decision about US foreign policy, and one directly impinging on Ukrainian defense against Russian aggression. There really won’t be a stronger case for executive privilege than that, especially when the impeachment investigation is just fishing for third-hand tales about Rudy Giuliani’s dogged pursuit of rumors about a coke-sniffing ne’er-do-well who knocked up a pole dancer.Report
he will do, to quote CJ Rehnquist on his time at the Clinton Impeachment “I did Nothing, and I did it well.”Report
I’m not sure I put much stock in either point here.
First, yeah, I heard the thing yesterday from some committee chair in the House. But who knows, it kinda seems like he just misspoke. Why would he be feeling pressure? Like I said above, none of this seems likely to change any voters minds.
Regarding Bolton, he announced that he would testify in the Senate. You think he’s going to walk that back? I thought it might be a cynical ploy – he announced that he would testify because he knew he wouldn’t have to because the Senate isn’t going to call witnesses – but who knows really what goes on in the heads of all the players, including Bolton.
Media loves to read tea leaves and minds of actors, scribbling in thoughts that gives them lots of clicks from partisan readers. I’m feeling cautious about thinking I know so much.Report
Well, my take is that it if Trump invokes executive privilege, it doesn’t matter if Bolton wants to testify or not. It kind of puts what he’d like to say in the realm of “classified information” that he can’t reveal to anyone, and then the courts have to rule on whether what he wants to say is protected or not.
Now of course Bolton is fully aware that he will probably never have to testify, and as anyone with sharp political sense would do in that situation, he’s saying he’d like to testify. That way nobody can accuse him of being part of any cover up, and it’ll probably generate book sales way down the road. It’s a win-win position. He may not even know anything that’s worth hearing, and is just yanking everybody’s chain.Report
The likelihood of the National Security Advisor who was listening to the phone call in question and then had to run the President’s policies after NOT knowing anything pertinent to the impeachment trial is vanishingly small.Report
Bernie and Warren are Senators, Joe is not. Delaying things lets Nancy pick the time when he can campaign without them around to distract things.Report
She should withdraw the articles and then re-vote on them now and include the stuff about using Iran to distract from the previous impeachment.
Then Trump will be the first President to be impeached multiple times.Report
-Mitch McConnell. 1/9/20Report
There it is…
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Once you’ve lost Chris Cilizza you’ve lost…um…Chris Cilizza.Report
Ironically or maybe it’s just par Cilliza there are docs coming out today from Lev Parnas that with very little exaggeration show Rudes taking notes of a frickin criminal conspiracy as Trump’s lawyer in Ukraine. Even have notes saying “do crimes” on Ritz Carlton notes pads.Report
Greg, please understand. I am not looking for reasons that Trump, seriously, is going to get impeached.
The main thing that I have been keeping my eyes open for are cracks in the façade. A change in narrative, if you will.
If you want to argue that Cillizza is an idiot and fake news, you will get *ZERO* argument from me.
That said, I do think it’s interesting when Real Journalists start saying the things that I’ve been keeping my eye out for journalists saying.
We can get to the impeachment trial proper as soon as Pelosi sends the articles over.Report
She already killed it with her delay. She wanted impeachment to be the biggest event in modern American history, but instead it got completely buried under speculation about events surrounding the 6th person in line for the British throne. Is there any way that Princess Beatrice (or whatever her name is) could move up as a result? Will Harry and Megyn move to Vancouver or Toronto? America waits on pins and needles to find out.
The only way she could revive interest in impeachment is by alleging that Trump might have passed along unfounded rumors that Barack and Michelle were advising Harry and Megyn on attaining financial success after leaving office. Absent that, impeachment will have trouble climbing higher than page three.Report
The real journalists seem to be preoccupied covering the jaw dropping list of crimes spilling out of Parnas’ phone.
But I’m sure they will return to palace courtier gossip soon enough.Report
Twitter seems to be talking about the Democratic debate and whether Bernie and Warren refused to shake the hand of the other.Report
Dana Milbank at WaPo:
“This had to be one of the most successful failures — one of the most triumphant defeats — in modern political history.
ouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) clearly failed in the stated aim of her four-week delay in sending impeachment articles to the Senate: to withhold the articles and the naming of impeachment managers until, as she put it last month, “we see the process that is set forth in the Senate.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) didn’t reveal his impeachment resolution and made no commitment to bring forth witnesses or documents.
But Pelosi’s delay seems to have blunted any hope President Trump’s defenders had of dismissing the charges without a trial. Before the speaker’s gambit, McConnell pledged that “there will be no difference between the president’s position and our position as to how to handle this.” Trump is now calling for a dismissal, but Senate Republicans say they won’t allow that.”
John Cole at Balloon Juice phrases this much better than I can:
“This is about as close as a beltway asshole who treats politics like sports talk radio — picking winners and losers for everything, focusing on personality instead of performance — is going to get to a nuanced perspective.”
I prefer the more elegant term “palace courtier”, but potayto, potahto.Report
Yeah, when I was a Christian, we had negative words for the people who only wanted to study the individual books and letters in the Bible without assuming that they were inspired by God.
They weren’t coming at the topic from the proper perspective. They were pretending to be neutral and unbiased, but isn’t saying “I’m not going to pretend that The Lord was behind these words” a prejudice as well?
Anyway, here’s twitter:
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