We begin 2021 where we began 2020: an impeachment of the President of the United States.
But the distance from where we launch articles of impeachment in 2021 compared to 2020 is galactic.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is clear that if Vice President Pence and the cabinet don’t invoke the 25th Amendment to remove President Trump from office, the House will impeach him this week.
Pelosi said the President must be held accountable. She noted that her phone was exploding with ‘impeach, impeach, impeach.’ She said if Pence and the Cabinet don’t act to gut Mr. Trump of his powers, the House will proceed with our action.
How would it work?
Note that the House is supposed to be out of session until the inauguration. But articles of impeachment don’t require weeks of interviews, depositions, investigations, hearings and floor debate.
If the House quickly crafts articles of impeachment and puts them on the floor and if the House approves the articles, a figure is impeached. They can go to the floor rather quickly if they want.
Why do it with only days left of his term?
Democrats view the president’s Wednesday speech as so malignant - triggering the sacking of the Capitol that he has to be called out. That’s to say nothing of politically forcing Republicans to take a challenging vote and be on the record either defending or breaking with Trump. Moreover, Democrats would love to leave Trump with a double impeachment mark on his record.
it happened with samuel kent, a federal judge was impeached 10 years ago and what happened is they impeached him and then he resigned before they finished the trial so they had to flush the articles but you have to take it up in the senate. the only thing the senate has to do is receive the impeachment articles, read them aloud in the senate and hear from the impeachment managers, prosecutors and nancy pelosi has not appointed them and they have not sent the resolution to the senate. everybody who is a prominent democrat is going to want to be one of those managers but is there anybody lobbying or campaigning for it, that s not the kind of person she is going to pick. if this happens what would a trial in the senate look like? nobody knows. mitch mcconnell and chuck schumer have to get together to form a deal this is what happened with trent lott and tom daschle in 1999. if you get unanimous consent, all 100 senators to agree, that is the point of the round in the senate, they se
impeachment nancy pelosi has ball control here. a couple of things might be going on here number one, she might be trying to tap the handbrake here and say, wait a minute, maybe impeachment is bad. if the senate is going to have an impeachment trial and they re going to call the bidens and adam schiff, this is really bad for democrats. let s just stop this right now. also, she prevents president trump from saying i was impeached, but i was exonerated in the senate. the other factor here is maybe nancy pelosi turns around and says, all right, we can continue to make this case that the senate playing field is unfair. it s tilted toward the president. they make that case about mitch mcconnell, that he is the grim reaper, doesn t run a fair senate. she can continue to pound that point in the court of public opinion. shannon: okay, so is it possible, has it ever happened that the articles are passed and there is not a trial in the senate? it happened once with samuel kent, a federal j