House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer thinks he can force Senator Mitch McConnell to take an impeachment trial seriously by refusing to send the articles of impeachment that will be voted on today up to the Senate for a trial.
Hoyer’s bid to pressure McConnell to prolong the drama by holding a real trial with testimony and witnesses isn’t going to work.
In recent weeks, some legal scholars have suggested Speaker Nancy Pelosi could consider refusing to transmit articles of impeachment — likely to pass the House Wednesday evening — to the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has declared he is coordinating trial strategy with the White House.
Though the request seemed to have little currency on the hill, it’s gained steam in recent days as McConnell has continued to insist he doesn’t intend to act as an impartial overseer of the Senate trial.
Hoyer said Democratic colleagues have approached him in recent days, citing an op-ed by constitutional lawyer Laurence Tribe in which he calls on Democrats to delay sending impeachment articles to the Senate until McConnell agrees to run a fairer process.
A “fairer process”? You first, Democrats.
“Under the current circumstances, such a proceeding would fail to render a meaningful verdict of acquittal,” Tribe wrote. Notably, House Judiciary Committee Democrats huddled with Tribe earlier this month as they practiced behind closed doors for their series of impeachment hearings.
Some Democrats said they became convinced such a move was under consideration when House leaders decided against naming impeachment managers — the set of lawmakers who would argue their case on the Senate floor — until an undetermined later date.
There’s nothing “meaningful” at all in these proceedings. It’s pure political theater — a three-act drama scripted to appease the Democrats’ rabid base of Trump haters and a salivating media who can’t resist the “drama” and “history” involved.
That the proceedings will go down as nothing more than an exercise in partisan politics is pretty much of a given. How could it be otherwise with the majority making a mockery of fairness? The fix was in from the start and as a manufactured political event, it’s going exactly as planned.
Half the country doesn’t believe what Trump did warrants removing him from office. With the nation so closely divided, Democrats seem perfectly willing to overturn the results of the 2016 election — a dream they’ve all shared since election night. This kind of cavalier attitude toward the democratic process is dangerous. They are treating impeachment as a just another political weapon designed to embarrass Trump and the Republicans instead of the solemn duty it should be.
They’ve known from the beginning that few Republican senators would ever vote to convict the president, making their efforts to remove him useless and futile. But their hysteria about Trump blinded them the reality that Trump isn’t going anywhere unless he is defeated in an election.
Every day this circus continues makes the possibility of him losing less likely.
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