Can the House Delay Transferring Articles of Impeachment
Manufactures of impeachment delivered to Senate, triggering historic trial of President Trump
Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House was holding the president "accountable."
Firm Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday formally set up in motion the process of sending the articles of impeachment confronting President Donald Trump to the Senate, triggering a historic trial set to begin on Thursday.
At an "engrossment" signing ceremony for the Firm resolution naming the vii impeachment managers -- the lawmakers who will present the Firm example as prosecutors at the trial -- Pelosi said the House was doing its "constitutional duty."
"Today, we will make history," she said, "when we walk downward -- when the managers walk the hall, they will cantankerous a threshold in history, delivering articles of impeachment against the president of the The states for corruption of power and obstruction of the House."
"This president volition be held accountable," she said.
After signing the resolution, she handed out the pens she used to the managers.
And so, marking the somber nature of the occasion, the managers silently walked the articles, in two blueish folders, across the Capitol from the House to the Senate, where the House clerk announced their inflow. The Senate will formally accept them on Thursday.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that the Senate would convene at noon afterward which the managers will read the articles aloud, Chief Justice John Roberts will be sworn in and he, in turn, will swear in senators to serve as jurors in the case.
"Permit me close with this," McConnell said. "This is a hard fourth dimension for our state. But this is precisely the kind of fourth dimension for which the framers created the Senate. I am confident this body tin can ascension in a higher place short-termism and factional fever and serve the long-term all-time interests of our nation.
"We can exercise this. And we must," he said.
Before Midweek, the House voted 228-193 to formally send the impeachment charges confronting President Trump to the Senate to brainstorm the third presidential impeachment trial in American history.
The Firm resolution officially appoints the vii managers, named by Pelosi Midweek morning.
In the morn, shortly later being named an impeachment manager, House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler submitted the text of a resolution that spells out the managers' duties.
During the short floor fence before the vote, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy took aim at the managers appointed by Pelosi, as they sat in front of him, listening.
"By selecting this particular batch of managers, the speaker has further proven she's not interested in winning the minds, the hearts, or fifty-fifty following the Constitution," he said, calling out Nadler, and House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, specifically.
He criticized Pelosi'due south comments this forenoon well-nigh Trump existence impeached "forever," accusing her of playing politics.
"The speaker said, 'The President is impeached forever.' Is this what this is all most?" he said. Pelosi pumped her fist in the air equally McCarthy quoted her.
There were about 140 members of the public watching from the galleries.
When it was her turn, Pelosi, standing next to a affiche showing the American flag and a quote from the Pledge of Fidelity, ended fence by denouncing Trump'due south actions and defending the timing of the impeachment proceedings in the House.
"It is a fact that in one case somebody is impeached, they are always impeached. Information technology cannot exist erased. I know you don't like hearing that," Pelosi said to McCarthy.
Trump, she said, "gave us no choice" on impeachment.
"They would take liked united states to send this over on Christmas Eve so they could dismiss it. Perhaps they don't know that dismissal is a cover-up."
President Trump, participating in a signing ceremony of an agreement between the United states and Prc at the White Business firm, observed some Republicans in the audition and directed them to go vote confronting the resolution.
"It'southward on the impeachment hoax," Trump said of the resolution. "Information technology's not going to matter 'cause it's going very well, but I'd rather accept you lot voting than sitting here listening to me introduce you. They have a hoax going on over at that place, let's have care of it."
"Resolved, That Mr. Schiff, Mr. Nadler, Ms. Lofgren, Mr. Jeffries, Mrs. Demings, Mr. Crow, and Ms. Garcia of Texas are appointed managers to bear the impeachment trial against Donald John Trump, President of the United States, that a message exist sent to the Senate to inform the Senate of these appointments, and that the managers and then appointed may, in connection with the training and the conduct of the trial, showroom the manufactures of impeachment to the Senate and take all other actions necessary…," the resolution states, formally naming each impeachment manager.
The resolution goes on to authorize "employing legal, clerical, and other necessary assistants and incurring such other expenses as may exist necessary, to be paid from amounts available to the Committee on the Judiciary nether applicative expense resolutions or from the applicative accounts of the Business firm of Representatives."
In other words, the costs of the Business firm participation in the Senate trial will exist covered by the Judiciary Committee.
The measure also authorizes "sending for persons and papers, and filing with the Secretary of the Senate, on the office of the House of Representatives, any pleadings, in conjunction with or subsequent to, the exhibition of the articles of impeachment that the managers consider necessary."
Pelosi will sign the bill at a v p.m. engrossing ceremony in the Capitol, before the managers carry out the ritual of marching across the Capitol to present the beak to the Senate secretary.
Earlier, every bit she named the managers, Pelosi, with Schiff and Nadler at her side, began by maxim "an impeachment volition terminal forever."
Schiff and Nadler will exist two of the mangers, Schiff designated by Pelosi equally the pb manager.
"This is a very important day for united states of america," she said.
"Time has been our friend in all this," she added, noting what she called the new "incriminating" prove that has surfaced in the month since the House impeachment vote on December. xviii, including new documents from Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal lawyer.
Schiff said that bombshell new evidence, revealed by the House merely Tuesday night, must exist considered by the Senate.
Schiff added that documents will be just as of import as any witnesses, citing a letter Giuliani sent Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and what it said about his having Trump'south blessing.
"If the Senate wants to see the evidence, they should demand to run into the documents," he said.
Democrats further pushed back on the comparison to the Clinton trial precedent, pointing to the fact that during Clinton, the Senate had the full record cheers to the Starr investigation and the House investigation.
Nadler also batted down the early suggestion from Republicans that former Vice President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, should be called, saying he wouldn't exist considered a relevant witness.
"It'south important for the president to know and Vladimir Putin to know that the American voters decide who are president is. We wouldn't be in this situation had we not waited and insist that there be witnesses and we run into documentation," Pelosi said.
Other managers Pelosi named were Reps. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Val Demings of Florida, Firm Administration Committee Chair Zoe Lofgren of California, Sylvia Garcia of Texas and Jason Crow of Colorado.
Pelosi said she chose members of Congress with feel as litigators who are comfy in a courtroom setting and making a stiff, evidence-based case.
"The accent is making the strongest possible case to protect and defend our Constitution, to seek the truth for the American people," she said.
When asked about the delay in transferring the manufactures, Schiff said the actress time helped Democrats make the case for a trial in the Senate subsequently Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell initially said he would support efforts to dismiss the case.
"If McConnell makes this the first trial in history without witnesses it will be exposed for what it is and that'due south an endeavor to cover upward for the president," Schiff said.
"Dismissal is cover-up," Pelosi added.
"Information technology is essential nosotros bring this impeachment to stop the president from rigging the adjacent election," Nadler said.
Pelosi ended the declaration by alert that should the Senate fall curt of a full trial, it wouldn't overshadow the Business firm's impeachment vote - just the third in American history.
"He has been held accountable. He has been impeached forever. They tin can never erase that," Pelosi said.
There have been twenty presidential impeachment managers in American history; all of them have been white men.
Pelosi's team has three women: Demings, Lofgren and Sylvia Garcia.
There are 2 freshman lawmakers on the team: Crow, a former Ground forces Ranger and lawyer, and Garcia.
Crow helped write the pivotal Washington Mail service op-ed with other freshman in September in favor of impeachment that was seen as turning the tide in favor of impeachment in the caucus. He'southward the only manager who is not a member of the Judiciary or Intelligence Committees. Demings, the quondam police master of Orlando, is on both panels.
Lofgren is a veteran of iii impeachments: She was a Judiciary Commission staffer during Watergate, and served on the panel during Clinton's impeachment.
Though the House voted to impeach Trump in December, charging him with corruption of power and obstacle of Congress, Pelosi withheld delivering the charges to the Senate, saying she wanted McConnell to get-go outline the rules of the trial and commit to bringing key witnesses earlier the Senate to testify, including former White House National Security Adviser John Bolton.
While McConnell resisted Pelosi's pressure level campaign, a number of Senate Republicans take expressed involvement in voting to hear from witnesses after the initial opening arguments. And McConnell has ruled out dismissing the charges against Trump at the start of proceedings, a move that Democrats feared would circumvent an airing of the charges against the president.
"The American people deserve the truth, and the Constitution demands a trial," Pelosi wrote in a statement released on Tuesday.
Presently after discussion came about the planned House vote, McConnell took to the Senate flooring to lambaste what he called an "capricious" month-long delay in sending over the articles.
The delay has impacted the plans of the several Senate Democrats running for president, forcing them to adjust their entrada schedules leading up to the Iowa caucuses early on next calendar month.
McConnell said arguments in the Senate trial are expected to begin adjacent Tuesday.
Removal from office would require 67 senators voting in favor of conviction, constituting a uncomplicated majority of the torso. That means at least 20 Republicans would need to plow against the president, bold all Democrats vote to convict.
Source: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-impeachment-live-updates-house-votes-send-articles/story?id=68277959
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