The Impeachment Stalemate Is Working Fine for Democrats
The Impeachment Stalemate Is Working Fine for Democrats
No one is blinking yet.
By Jeremy Stahl
Jan 03, 20207:26 PM
As the second session of the 116th Congress got underway on Friday, the biggest question on Congress’ plate at the start of 2020—how a Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump might be conducted and when it will even happen—moved no closer to a resolution. That’s a good thing—for now.
On Friday morning, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell indicated that he had no plans of acceding to Democratic leaders’ demands that a Senate trial include witnesses and document production, as past impeachment trials did. “About this fantasy that the speaker of the House will get to hand-design the trial proceedings in the Senate, that’s obviously a nonstarter,” McConnell said on the floor of the Senate. He also suggested that he was fine with an indefinite stalemate. “We can’t hold a trial without the articles,” McConnell said. “The Senate’s own rules don’t provide for that. So, for now, we’re content to continue the ordinary business of the Senate while House Democrats continue to flounder.”
But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to blink. Before Christmas, she pledged not to transmit impeachment articles until she knew what the rules of a Senate trial would be. Pelosi suggested on Friday afternoon that the ball was in McConnell’s court. “The GOP Senate must immediately proceed in a manner worthy of the Constitution and in light of the gravity of the president’s unprecedented abuses,” Pelosi said.
Neither side has any reason to budge at this point. McConnell does not want to force the more vulnerable members of his caucus to vote for the unpopular proposition to bar witnesses from the Senate trial when there is still a possibility that new information could come to light while Pelosi withholds the articles. So, it doesn’t make sense for him to announce and hold a vote on an official plan on new impeachment rules before it is certain that Pelosi will actually send them over.
Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, meanwhile, are hoping that new information will trickle out to increase pressure on vulnerable Republican members in the Senate to support a trial that includes witnesses and document production, as in all past impeachments. Indeed, in his own remarks on the Senate floor on Friday, Schumer cited a trio of news developments over the winter break that would support his call for specific witnesses and document production. Those developments were the administration’s production of heavily redacted documents in response to a Freedom of Information Act request regarding its decision to withhold military aid from Ukraine while the president pressed that country to investigate his political rivals, a report in the New York Times about how senior officials argued for releasing the aid to no avail, and a report in Just Security showing that as late as the end of August orders for the hold came directly from the president.
“Each new revelation mounts additional pressure on the members of this chamber to seek the whole truth,” Schumer said.
Pelosi echoed this argument in her own statement. “Leader McConnell is doubling down on his violation of his oath, even after the exposure of new, deeply incriminating documents this week which provide further evidence of what we know: President Trump abused the power of his office for personal, political gain,” Pelosi said.
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https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/01/impeachment-senate-trial-stalemate.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
I call BULLSHIT on that! What crap! 
