House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Democrats need to ascertain how the Senate will conduct its trial, after Republican lawmakers criticized her tactic to delay the articles of impeachment.
“The House cannot choose our impeachment managers until we know what sort of trial the Senate will conduct. President Trump blocked his own witnesses and documents from the House, and from the American people, on phony complaints about the House process. What is his excuse now?” she wrote on Twitter on Dec. 23.
President Donald Trump and his allies in Congress took issue with Pelosi’s statement and argued that it contradicts her claim that the House needed to act quickly on impeachment. Republicans say House Democrats and Pelosi rushed their case against Trump and decided not to go to court to obtain documents and witnesses in the three-month inquiry after the White House said the executive branch is entitled to executive privileges.
Her remarks came shortly after Trump criticized her for the decision.
“Pelosi gives us the most unfair trial in the history of the U.S. Congress, and now she is crying for fairness in the Senate, and breaking all rules while doing so. She lost Congress once, she will do it again!” Trump wrote on Twitter.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) also lashed out on Dec. 23 amid the impasse and accused Democratic senators of bias.
“Do you think Chuck Schumer is impartial? Do you think Elizabeth Warren is impartial? Bernie Sanders is impartial? So let’s quit the charade. This is a political exercise. … All I’m asking of Schumer is that we treat Trump the same way we treated Clinton,” McConnell told Fox News.
During several talk shows on Dec. 22, Republican senators questioned why Pelosi would hold the articles.
“This is a sign [Pelosi] understands just how weak these articles are. These articles of impeachment that they actually voted on were really an admission of failure,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told Fox News. “For months, [Democrats] had been promising all of this evidence of criminal activity. For months, they’d be talking about bribery, they’d be talking about quid pro quo,” he said. “But then they heard all the evidence and they got no evidence of it and these articles don’t allege any crime.”
Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, said he believes Pelosi doesn’t have the power to hold up the trial.
“The Speaker has a lot of power,” Blunt told CNN on Dec. 22, adding that he doesn’t think she has the authority to hold the articles once “the House has spoken” on the articles of impeachment, which accuse Trump of abusing his power and obstructing Congress.
“I think it’s a mistake on the speaker’s part,” he said of the delay tactic. “I think this will look pretty political.”
