Impeachment Briefing: What Happened Today

December 19, 2019

By Noah Weiland

Welcome back to the Impeachment Briefing. House Democrats are making a serious threat: to delay transmitting the articles of impeachment to the Senate.

What happened today

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would wait to see what the trial in the Senate would look like before sending the two articles of impeachment that were passed by the House last night, leaving the timing of a possible trial in doubt but potentially giving Democrats some leverage.
Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, has already rejected a proposal from Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, for the trial to include testimony from witnesses, including Mick Mulvaney, Mr. Trump’s acting chief of staff, and John Bolton, the president’s former national security adviser.
Representative James Clyburn, the No. 3 House Democrat, said he was willing to wait “as long as it takes” to transmit the two impeachment articles. “We would be crazy to walk in there knowing he has set up a kangaroo court,” Mr. Clyburn said this morning on CNN.
Mr. McConnell fired back at Ms. Pelosi, telling reporters that he was “not anxious” to have a trial. “If she thinks her case is so weak she doesn’t want to send it over, throw me into that briar patch,” he told reporters.

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What Nancy Pelosi is thinking

Why is Ms. Pelosi saying that she might wait to send the articles to the Senate? I called my colleague Julie Davis, our congressional editor.

Julie, I was caught a little by surprise last night when I heard that Ms. Pelosi might withhold the articles of impeachment. Were you?

Yes. There has been this idea percolating for months, pushed by Laurence Tribe, a Harvard Law professor, and some of the more progressive Democrats, that rather than send the articles to the Senate, which was certain to acquit Mr. Trump, the House should just pass them and hold the articles. Leave them hanging over Mr. Trump, they said, and he’ll never have a chance to have his name cleared.

The idea never seemed to gain currency, certainly not with Ms. Pelosi. And I still don’t think she plans to keep the articles forever.

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But when Mr. McConnell started talking openly about how he had no intention of being impartial in a Senate impeachment trial, and how he planned to work hand in glove with the White House to quickly acquit the president, Democrats became really concerned about whether this process was going to be fair. And now I think Ms. Pelosi recognizes that waiting could provide time to iron out some of those details.

Why is sending these articles to the Senate such a big deal?

Impeachment is a very regimented process: As soon as the House appoints the managers, the lawmakers who will serve as the prosecutors in the trial, it triggers the articles to be sent over to the Senate. Once that happens, it’s like a hot potato: The Senate can’t not take them. So it was always the plan to wait a bit to send the articles; otherwise, the Senate would have had to stay and have a trial over Christmas.

What no one had necessarily anticipated was that the process might not even begin until after Congress returns in January. Ms. Pelosi’s idea is to give Chuck Schumer, who has to negotiate the contours of the Senate trial with Mr. McConnell, more leverage.

What exactly is the leverage she thinks she has?

Mr. Trump is desperate to see himself defended publicly and acquitted. Mr. McConnell keeps saying he doesn’t care if the articles never arrive, but Ms. Pelosi is betting that Mr. Trump isn’t willing to have these articles hanging without having his day in court. So she’s using pretty much her last point of leverage in this whole process. If he wants to be vindicated soon in public, maybe that factors into Mr. McConnell’s calculation.

If Ms. Pelosi gets more of what she wants from Senate Republicans, what might we see?

It’s not really clear what Democrats are likely to settle for. They’ve asked for four specific witnesses, but the Republicans will never agree. What they really want are some sort of parameters for the trial that can be agreed on, whether that’s a number of witnesses, an amount of time for arguments, a number of days. Ultimately I think this question of whether they’ll have witnesses is going to have to be decided by a vote.

Will the president fight for a speedy trial?

My colleague Maggie Haberman tweeted today that Mr. Trump’s lawyers are considering their options if Ms. Pelosi withholds the articles of impeachment. I asked Maggie to elaborate.

Why is he so eager to have this Senate trial? We’ve reported that he wants a theatrical defense and a drawn-out trial.

I think he has gone back and forth about what he wants. But he is someone who understands the value of television and its power to reach people. He has fact sets that he wants people to hear and understand.

What options are the president’s lawyers thinking of?

A range of things, from whether they can go ahead with a trial without the articles being sent, to whether they get nullified if they aren’t sent.

Did Ms. Pelosi’s maneuvering catch the White House by surprise?

Before the vote took place, some of the president’s advisers were telling me they believed there would be a discussion of holding the articles of impeachment from the Senate. So they had some sense of something, from Republican allies.

But it’s funny: Many of them refused to believe that this was really going to happen. They told the president — and themselves — that they weren’t even convinced Ms. Pelosi had the votes for impeachment articles, and therefore might not bring them to the floor.

Does the White House understand Ms. Pelosi’s strategy?

I don’t think they have a sense. The president asked a lot of people over the last 24 hours what they thought Ms. Pelosi was doing.

What else we’re reading

Mr. Trump announced this afternoon that Jeff Van Drew, one of the Democrats who voted against impeachment articles yesterday, would become a Republican — a widely expected move. In the Oval Office, Mr. Van Drew pledged his “undying support” to the president. But behind closed doors, The Daily Beast reported today, Mr. Van Drew has called Mr. Trump stupid and mentally unstable.
Representative Debbie Dingell called for civility after Mr. Trump, upset over her vote for impeachment articles, insulted Representative John Dingell, her husband, who died earlier this year. Two Republican representatives from Michigan also called for the president to apologize.
In Chicago and cities around the country yesterday, people said that they were not discussing impeachment. Instead of watching the proceedings in Washington, Americans largely went on with their lives.

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