House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam
Schiff, D-Calif., speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in
Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2019. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
On Wednesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led Democrats in
approving a measure to finally forward the articles of impeachment passed on
December 18 over to the Senate for a trial. Pelosi had held up the articles
after insisting that Trump needed to be impeached as soon as possible because
he posed an imminent threat to the 2020 election. Democrats also approved seven
impeachment managers, headed by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).
"We are here today to cross a very important
threshold in American history," Pelosi said before the mostly partisan vote (228-193).
She recalled her long opposition to impeachment and then blamed Trump for
forcing her hand. "He crossed a threshold. He gave us no choice."
Yet the speaker's own actions suggest she did indeed have
a choice. Contrary to her protestations that Trump needed to be removed as soon
as possible, Pelosi delayed the process by refusing to hand over the articles
of impeachment once the House had voted on them. She claimed that since Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he would coordinate with White House
counsel — as Senate
Democrats did during Clinton's impeachment — the Senate trial would
not be fair.
That claim proved particularly rich, given the
underhanded manner in which Democrats prosecuted the impeachment hearings. The
push began with a "whistleblower" inside the CIA who coordinated with
Schiff's office in crafting his report! For some reason, Democrats took at face
value former Vice President Joe Biden's assertions that his son Hunter had done
no wrong in getting a lucrative job at a notoriously corrupt Ukrainian gas
company while Biden was the Obama point person on Ukraine.
Democrats insisted that Trump had asked Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate potential corruption only as a political
tactic against Joe Biden, rather than in an attempt to get to the bottom of
what seems at the very least a conflict of interest. Pelosi tried to turn a
policy dispute into an impeachable offense, and Democrats seized on a situation
that is difficult to explain to an average voter.
Worse, when the White House raised a routine executive
privilege defense to some congressional subpoenas, House Democrats decided not
to wait and challenge the matter in court but rather to add another article of
impeachment for "obstruction of Congress."
For these and other reasons, McConnell condemned the
impeachment as an exercise in partisan rage. "House Democrats want to
create new rules for this president because they feel uniquely enraged,"
he argued. "This is by far the thinnest basis for any House-passed
presidential impeachment in American history." He condemned it as
"the most rushed, least thorough, and most unfair impeachment inquiry in
modern history."
After Pelosi refused to deliver the articles to the
Senate, McConnell repeatedly called her bluff, and Pelosi finally caved
last Friday after Republicans introduced a measure enabling
the Senate to nullify an impeachment passed by the House if the
speaker did not forward the articles to the upper chamber.
Indeed, this measure
makes a great deal of sense, since Pelosi had effectively pocket-vetoed her own
impeachment.
Rather than prioritizing the impeachment after the New
Year, the House speaker rushed a toothless War Powers Resolution to condemn
Trump's decision to kill Quds Force leader Qasem Soleimani.
In addition to Schiff, Pelosi named House Judiciary
Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Hakeem
Jeffries (D-N.Y.), Jason Crow (D-Colo.), Val Demings (D-Fla.), and Sylvia
Garcia (D-Texas) as impeachment managers, to argue the case in the Senate.
Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) was the lone Democrat
voting against sending the articles on to the Senate. He had voted against
impeachment and he also joined
Republicans in signing a letter to the Supreme Court, urging a
reconsideration on abortion cases such as Roe v. Wade (1973).
The trial is set to begin next week.
Follow
Tyler O'Neil, the author of this article, on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
___________________
RELATED
STORY
Even CNN Admits: 'Pelosi Gambled and Lost on
Impeachment Delay'
BY MICHAEL VAN DER
GALIEN | PJ Media
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
When the Democrat Speaker of the House of Representatives
(and I use the word "representatives" very broadly here. God knows
they're more about representing themselves and their own interests than the
voters in their districts) has lost CNN, you know she has
messed up. Tremendously. Epicly.
In a new piece for CNN.com, Editor-at-Large Chris
Cillizza explains to his readers -- 99% of them progressive
Democrats, of course -- that Speaker Pelosi has truly botched her impeachment
gambit. Her announcement that she'd send the impeachment articles to the Senate
this week, Cillizza writes, "amounts to a stark concession that her plan
to delay that action for nearly a month failed."
"Pelosi's goal was simple: To try to force Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's hand. Pelosi wanted to use her possession of
the articles of impeachment to yield promises and/or compromises from McConnell
-- most notably on the issue of witnesses being allowed to be called in the
Senate trial," he continues.
However, there was one minor problem: "Except that
McConnell wasn't playing ball."
"The leverage she imagined she possessed to get
McConnell to accede to her wishes didn't exist," the CNN editor continues.
"McConnell was perfectly happy waiting while Pelosi held on to the
articles of impeachment, probably believing rightly that these sorts of
delaying tactics would look like just more Washington funny business to the
average person."
Pelosi's mistake, he concludes, basically boils down to
her underestimating "the extent to which the Senate, by its very nature,
resists being told what to do in any way, shape or form." The Senate, he
goes on to write, "has never liked being told what to do by the House,"
regardless of which power is in power. "Each body views itself as an
independent fiefdom, governed by its own rules and codes of conduct. The idea
of one chamber telling the other what to do is simply anathema -- no matter
which party is in charge of each."
When Pelosi refused to send over the articles of
impeachment, progressives everywhere -- but especially in the old, corporatist
and radical leftist Media Cartel -- hailed her for being a master strategist.
Oh yes, she was showing Mitch McConnell how it was done. Pelosi was Girlboss.
Awesome. Fantastic. Majestic. She was the new and improved Sun Tzu.
Only there was one issue with that talking point: Pelosi
is, as Mark Levin frequently explains on his radio
show, a horrible strategist. She may not be stupid as
such -- I highly doubt anyone with an IQ of, say, 65 would become Speaker of
the House -- but an Intellectual Heavyweight she is not.
Everybody could see that McConnell can do whatever he
pleases. The House doesn't dictate to the Senate how it should approach an
impeachment trial. And if the House refuses to send over impeachment articles,
well, guess what, the Senate can simply dismiss the impeachment altogether and
inform the House that it's game over. Or the Senate can just wait, and wait,
and wait, and wait, and wait... until the end of time. After all, as long as
there is no trial, the president remains firmly in the driver's seat.
Clearly, Pelosi made such a mess out of it that even CNN
is now forced to admit that, well, she failed. Miserably.
The good news? It seems likely that Pelosi will remain
the Democrats' leader in Congress for quite a while to come. If that isn't good
news for President Trump, I don't know what is.
