Rep. Steve Scalise slams Pelosi for withholding impeachment articles from Senate

December 30, 2019

House Minority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) blasted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for her refusal to turn articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump over to the Senate for a trial, Fox News reported.

“It’s not her role to go over to the Senate,” Scalise said during an appearance on Fox News Sunday. “She can run for the Senate if she wants to be a senator, but the House has a role, the Senate has a role. It’s time for the Senate to do their job.”

 

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Scalise also said he thinks Pelosi is attempting to manipulate the next phase of the process simply because the impeachment case against Trump is so weak.

“They had a weak case, I think she knows they had a weak case,” Scalise said, “and yet they still wanted to impeach the president to appease their radical base. That’s what this was about from the beginning.”

 

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Strategy of delay

According to the Wall Street Journal, Pelosi claims that she is waiting to turn the articles over until she sees that the Senate trial will be what she calls fair — in other words, that Senate Republicans agree to call more witnesses against Trump and continue to dig for more dirt on the president.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has said that he would coordinate closely with the White House if and when a trial occurs and that he sees no need to call more witnesses. Instead, he is prepared to rely on the record compiled during the House inquiry — the same one Scalise deemed weak.

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Pelosi has done the only thing she can do to prevent Trump from being acquitted by the Senate — she has halted the impeachment altogether. It’s an attempt at face-saving, but she has exposed herself to even more criticism that House Democrats have been biased against Trump from the start and have engaged in nothing more than a political exercise.

Now, House Democrats are saying that they want to continue investigating and may even put more articles of impeachment forward, according to The Washington Times. In other words, they know they are facing a serious defeat, so they’re going to try a do-over.

Impeachment limbo

Republicans knew from the beginning that House Democrats had their minds made up on Trump’s guilt, but the question remains: Why were they unable to come up with an actual crime to include in their articles of impeachment?

Did Democrats rush to judgment? Is there more evidence against Trump somewhere that they just didn’t take the time to find?

It’s impossible to know exactly how the process will play out, but as things stand right now, the rapid acquittal of the president sought by McConnell and others is being stymied — at least for the time being — by Pelosi and her Democrat cohorts whose impeachment spectacle has not gone according to plan.

Until then, the nation remains stuck in impeachment limbo until something happens to break up the logjam.