WASHINGTON -- The White House argued Sunday that Speaker Nancy Pelosi has put herself in an untenable position by stalling House-passed articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump in hopes of shaping the upcoming Senate trial.
The House voted Wednesday to impeach Trump, who became only the third president in U.S. history to be formally charged with "high crimes and misdemeanors." Pelosi has declined to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate until Republicans provide details on witnesses and testimony, forestalling a trial on charges of obstruction of Congress and abuse of power.
Some Republicans including a key Trump ally predicted Sunday that the drive for new testimony by Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., would be for naught.
"She will yield. There's no way she can hold this position," said Marc Short, the chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence. "We think her case is going nowhere."
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Schumer have been at an impasse over the issue of new testimony, leaving open the possibility of a protracted delay until the articles are delivered. Trump complained Saturday that the holdup was "unfair" and claimed that Democrats were violating the Constitution, as the delay threatened to prolong the pain of impeachment and cast uncertainty on the timing of the vote Trump is set to claim as vindication.
Schumer told reporters in New York that "the Senate is yearning to give President Trump due process, which means that documents and witnesses should come forward. What is a trial with no witnesses and no documents? It's a sham trial."
Short called Pelosi's delay unacceptable, saying she's "trampling" Trump's rights to "rush this through, and now we're going to hold it up to demand a longer process in the Senate with more witnesses."
"If her case is so air-tight ... why does she need more witnesses to make her case?" Short said.
White House officials have highlighted Democrats' arguments that removing Trump was an "urgent" matter before the House impeachment vote, as they seek to put pressure on Pelosi to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate.
Short, appearing on Fox News Sunday, said Trump is frustrated by Pelosi's delay, but "also anxious to get not just acquitted but exonerated in the Senate."
Sen. Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat and 2020 presidential hopeful, said Pelosi has "been a lightworker in dark times" and will do the right thing.
"Those articles will come over," Booker said on NBC's Meet the Press. "What she's just trying to do is to make sure the best possible case for a fair trial happens."
Sen. Doug Jones, D-Ala., said on ABC's This Week: "There's nothing magic about moving these articles immediately," making the comparison with President Bill Clinton's impeachment.
The Clinton articles of impeachment were voted on Dec. 19, 1998. "They didn't come over to the United States Senate until around January the 6th or 7th, some three weeks later," Jones said. "There was a change in Congress."
Pelosi, said Jones, is asking, "what are the rules going to be when I send House managers over there? What kind of playing field are we going to have? What is the timing of this? I don't think that that's unreasonable."
McConnell has all but promised an easy acquittal of the president, and he appears to have secured Republican support for his plans to impose a framework drawn from the 1999 impeachment trial of Clinton. That trial featured a 100-0 vote on arrangements that established two weeks of presentations and argument before a partisan tally in which then-minority Republicans called a limited number of witnesses.
That has sparked a fight with Pelosi and Schumer, who are demanding trial witnesses who refused to appear during House committee hearings, including acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and former national security adviser John Bolton.
A close Trump ally, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Pelosi would fail in her quest "to get Mitch McConnell to bend to her will to shape the trial." Graham is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and was a House manager, comparable to a prosecutor, during the Senate's impeachment trial of Clinton.
"She'll eventually send the articles because public opinion will crush the Democrats," Graham said on Fox News Channel's Sunday Morning Futures. Asked whether he expected witnesses in the Senate, he replied: "No, I don't."
At one point, Trump had demanded the testimony of witnesses of his own, such as Democrats Joe Biden and his son Hunter, and the intelligence community whistleblower whose summer complaint sparked the impeachment probe. But he has since relented after concerted lobbying by McConnell and other Senate Republicans who pushed him to accept the swift acquittal from the Senate and not to risk injecting uncertainty into the process by calling witnesses.
The Senate's second-ranking Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois, said his party is looking for a signal from McConnell that he hasn't ruled out new witnesses and documents. But Durbin acknowledged that Democrats may not have much leverage in pushing a deal.
He criticized both Republican and Democratic senators who have already announced how they will vote in the trial, saying the Constitution requires senators to act as impartial jurors. Republicans hold a 53-vote majority in the Senate.
Democrats continued to criticize a recent vow by McConnell of "total coordination with the White House" on impeachment strategy, which they say violates the Kentucky Republican's oath of office.
The American people are "looking for a fair trial, not a fake trial," Durbin said on CNN's State of the Union.
"I think they have gone too far," he said of senators who have said how they would vote. "When it comes to saying, I made up my mind, it's all over, for goodness sakes, that is not what the Constitution envisioned."
Booker said that anyone in the administration who could affirm Trump's innocence, including Mulvaney, should "come before the Senate. Swear it to an oath."
The Constitution requires a two-thirds majority in the Senate to convict in an impeachment trial -- and Republicans have expressed confidence that they have more than enough votes to keep Trump in office.
MAGAZINE CRITICISM
Short also responded Sunday to an evangelical magazine's editorial that called for Trump's removal from office and described him as a "near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused."
Speaking on Meet the Press, Short defended Trump and expressed confidence about Trump's bond with evangelical voters, who remain a critical bloc inside the Republican Party.
"It's no surprise to you that evangelicals are not monolithic in their political viewpoints," Short said of the article by Christianity Today's retiring editor, Mark Galli.
Galli wrote that Trump's removal from office "is not a matter of partisan loyalties but loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments." And, he added, to the "many evangelicals who continue to support Mr. Trump in spite of his blackened moral record, we might say this: Remember who you are and whom you serve."
Christianity Today, founded by the late Rev. Billy Graham, published the editorial on Thursday. It sparked immediate anger from Trump and his allies, with the president tweeting that the publication is a "far left magazine ... which has been doing poorly."
Trump added that "no President has done more for the Evangelical community, and it's not even close."
Short echoed the president on Sunday. He cast Galli's comments as unrepresentative of evangelicals' appreciation for Trump and his policies.
Information for this article was contributed by Hope Yen, Zeke Miller and Julie Walker of The Associated Press; Stephen Cunningham and Hailey Waller of Bloomberg News; and Robert Costa and Sarah Pulliam Bailey of The Washington Post.
A Section on 12/23/2019