Hear ye, hear ye: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is hitting the send button on President Donald Trump’s impeachment. That’s after she paused the whole constitutional matter, producing a three-week standoff with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and complicating the campaigning picture for the five Democratic senators in the White House race. By Friday, three weeks before the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses, what leverage Pelosi, D-Calif., had possessed was in question. She wanted McConnell to allow witnesses and documents. He answered that those decisions would be made later — by the Republican-controlled Senate, not anyone in the Democratic-run House. With 51 votes for that plan, McConnell never budged. Yet it now appears at least a few Republicans are open to witness testimony once the trial begins. Here’s what to watch as the impeachment charges make their slow-motion journey to the Senate this week. ___ SHE’S READY Pelosi insisted for weeks that she would send the articles when she was ready. “Probably,” she said Thursday. “Soon,″ she added. Before noon the next day, after House members stampeded out of session for the weekend without acting on impeachment, a grinning Pelosi made her way toward her office. She paused at the threshold, casting Democrats as “a thousand flowers blossoming beautifully in our caucus.” Then, still smiling, Pelosi disappeared into her suite. It was 11:43 a.m. At that precise moment, Pelosi’s “Dear Colleague” letter saying she would send the impeachment articles this coming week landed in hundreds of congressional inboxes. ___ BUT FIRST Pelosi said she was directing the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., to write a resolution naming House members — “managers,” in the official parlance — to prosecute the charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress at Trump’s Senate impeachment trial. Whoever wins the plum assignments is a white-hot topic in the Capitol, and Pelosi has held the number of managers and their identities close. The speaker also said she would discuss the process “further” at a caucus meeting Tuesday. ___ AT LAST It’s McConnell’s turn. The model, he said, would be President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial in 1999. This past week, McConnell announced that he has the 51 votes required to launch the trial on those terms, and not Pelosi’s. Back then, all 100 senators agreed to start Clinton’s trial without an agreement to bring witnesses or testimony, as the Democrats have demanded in Trump’s proceedings. McConnell, protective of the 53-seat GOP majority and up for reelection himself this year, delivered hot words on the Senate floor in which he refused to “cede” decision making to the House. “It’s been a long wait,” McConnell said Friday. “and I’m glad it’s over.“ ___ THE MODEL McConnell said the resolution starting Trump’s Senate trial would not mirror Clinton’s word for word. Tactics and strategy, not drama, is McConnell’s style. But McConnell did say that what was good for Clinton is good for Trump. That likely means Senate rules and the 1999 resolution that governed Clinton’s trial would provide the framework at least to start Trump’s proceedings, so it’s worth looking at what happened then, beginning on Jan 7, 1999. There were 13 impeachment prosecutors during Clinton’s trial, including then-Rep. Lindsey Graham, now a GOP senator from South Carolina. Their procession into the Senate, the oath-taking of […]
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