Pelosi’s Unscripted Moment Sparks Fight On Impeachment Delay

(Bloomberg) -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s carefully scripted impeachment of Donald Trump took an unexpected turn an hour after she banged the gavel Wednesday night, as she opened the door to stalling a Senate trial on whether the president should be removed from office.

So far, there are no formal plans by Democrats to delay the impeachment. But Pelosi’s comment drew swift criticism from Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as Democrats have yet to clarify their timetable.

In an unscripted moment before reporters, Pelosi took a step favored by some in her Democratic caucus, but one she hadn’t broached herself: holding off on sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate until she secured changes in the rules for the trial in that chamber.

“So far we haven’t seen anything that looks fair to us,” Pelosi told reporters Wednesday after impeachment vote. She noted that McConnell has said he won’t be an impartial juror and that he will work in coordination with the White House counsel’s office.

“We’re not sending it tonight because it’s difficult to determine who the managers would be until we see the arena in which we will be participating,” Pelosi added. “This is a serious matter, even though the majority leader in the United States Senate says it’s OK for the foreman of the jury to be in cahoots with the lawyers of the accused.”

The idea initially pushed by outside commentators has gained traction among Democrats in a way that surprised even Pelosi’s top deputies. While House leaders were always planning to wait at least a day to name impeachment managers for the Senate trial, the suggestion to hold the impeachment articles in the House demand certain witnesses in the Senate has thrown the process into confusion.

Starting the Senate Trial

Pelosi tried to clarify her comments on Thursday, casting the issue of timing as more of a procedural question.

“The next thing for us will be when we see the process that is set forward in the Senate, then we’ll know the number of managers that we may have,” Pelosi said.

“We would like to see a fair process but we’ll see what they have and we’ll be ready,” Pelosi said of the Senate trial. “Frankly, I don’t care what the Republicans say.”

The House will need to pass a resolution naming the impeachment managers and appropriating money for the process before the Senate can begin its trial. The resolution won’t get a vote before Congress leaves for the holidays, according to a senior Democratic aide.

The resolution will be exactly the same as the measure that initiated the Senate trial after Bill Clinton’s impeachment in 1998, the aide said, with just the names of the president and the House managers changed. Although the resolution requires 10 minutes of floor debate, the House could take this procedural step during the break if no member objects, or it could wait until members return in the first full week of January, the aide said.

‘Political Cowardice’

Republicans slammed any proposed delay as the most egregious example of political manipulation seeping into what should be a serious constitutional exercise. Trump called Democrats the “Do Nothing Party” and retweeted South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham accusing Democrats of “constitutional extortion” and asking “what is driving this crazy idea?”

McConnell said the suggestion that the House might not immediately send the impeachment articles to the Senate is a sign that the House may be “second-guessing whether they even want to go to trial.” Speaking on the Senate floor Thursday, McConnell described the House impeachment process as “shoddy” work and said the proposal to delay the articles is “really comical.”

John Dean, former counsel in the Nixon White House and a frequent guest on cable news, has been arguing for weeks that Democrats have leverage because Trump doesn’t want a drawn out process hanging over him going into the 2020 election. Some congressional Democrats have embraced the idea as a way to secure the testimony of White House officials including former National Security Advisor John Bolton, Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and Secretary of State Michael Pompeo.

House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel, who leads one of the committees responsible for the impeachment investigation, said Wednesday before the impeachment vote that people outside Congress were pushing that proposal but he didn’t see any advantage to that strategy.

”I hear no discussion about that, and safe to say I would know, being one of the six chairs,” Engel said. Regarding the probability of Trump’s acquittal in the Senate, he said, “we went into this with our eyes wide open.”

--With assistance from Daniel Flatley.

To contact the reporter on this story: Billy House in Washington at bhouse5@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kevin Whitelaw at kwhitelaw@bloomberg.net, Anna Edgerton

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.