WASHINGTON -- Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday once again rebuffed growing calls to send the House's articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump to the Senate for trial and refused to provide a timetable for doing so, saying only that after weeks of delay, she would probably move "soon."
Pelosi reiterated a call for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to detail the rules for a Senate trial so she could choose a team of House lawmakers to prosecute the abuse-of-power and obstruction-of-Congress case.
"I keep giving you the same answer," the speaker said at her weekly news conference. "As I said right from the start, we need to see the arena in which we're sending our managers. Is that too much to ask?
"I will send them over when I'm ready," Pelosi added, "and that will probably be soon."
Voting largely along party lines, the Democratic-led House impeached Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress in the days before Christmas. But the speaker elected not to immediately send the articles of impeachment to the Senate, in a bid to pressure the Republican-led chamber into allowing additional witnesses and documents Trump blocked during the House's three-month inquiry.
Without them, Democrats have argued, the trial will be fundamentally tainted and effectively continue a cover-up they said Trump has directed from the start.
On Twitter, Trump accused Pelosi of balking because she had no case against him, saying that the articles "show no crimes and are a joke and a scam!"
[Video not showing up above? Click here to watch » https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPgKtwdfPwQ]
But McConnell said this week that he had secured the votes necessary to begin a trial on his own terms, without an agreement on hearing from witnesses or admitting new evidence. McConnell has said he will work in concert with Trump's legal team to bring about a speedy acquittal in the Senate after a House impeachment proceeding he has condemned as unfair and based on a shoddy case.
On Thursday, McConnell compared the speaker's approach to "junior varsity political hostage situations."
"They get to start it if they choose, but they do not get to declare that it can never be finished," he said. "They do not get to trap our entire country into an unending Groundhog Day of impeachment without resolution."
Taking her turn in what has become a daily rhetorical fight with McConnell, Pelosi accused the Republican leader of trying to cover up the facts of the case in a rush to acquit Trump and rejected his insistence that the Senate would proceed just as it did in 1999 when it tried President Bill Clinton for high crimes and misdemeanors.
"Witnesses, facts, truth -- that's what they're afraid of," Pelosi said.
In the weeks since Trump was impeached, Democrats have focused on new evidence about Trump's effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rivals and they pushed the Senate to consider new testimony, including from former White House national security adviser John Bolton. Republicans are just as focused on a speedy trial with acquittal.
Republicans have the leverage, with a slim 53-47 Senate majority, as McConnell rebuffs the Democratic demands for testimony and documents. But Democrats are using the delay to sow public doubt about the fairness of the process as they try to peel off wavering GOP senators for the upcoming votes. It takes just 51 senators to set the rules.
VIEWS ON WITNESSES
"When we say fair trial, we mean facts, we mean witnesses, we mean documents," said Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., promising votes ahead. "Every single one of us, in this Senate, will have to take a stand. How do my Republican friends want the American people, their constituents, and history to remember them?"
Trump weighed in from the White House suggesting that he, too, would like more witnesses at trial. They include former Vice President Joe Biden, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination now, and his son Hunter, as well as the government whistleblower whose complaint about the president's pressure on Ukraine sparked the impeachment investigation.
Trump said he doesn't plan to block Bolton from testifying, but that he would need to protect his executive privilege.
He told reporters on Thursday that it's up to the Senate to determine whether he should testify. "I don't stop it," Trump said.
But he said he needs to "protect presidential privilege" for himself and future presidents. He said he'd have to consult with lawyers about whether Bolton's testimony would present a problem.
"When we start allowing national security advisers to just go up and say whatever they want to say, we can't do that," Trump said.
Bolton said Monday that he would testify if subpoenaed.
Pelosi is under mounting pressure to deliver the charges. Some Democrats in the House and Senate have begun to voice impatience with the delay, saying that it was clear that McConnell would not relent on the rules for the trial and it was time for Pelosi to allow the proceeding to move forward.
In one remarkable turnabout, a senior House Democrat -- Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith of Washington state -- called on Pelosi to transmit the articles in a televised interview Thursday morning, only to reverse course within hours.
"I think it was perfectly advisable for the speaker to try to leverage that to try to get a better deal," Smith said on CNN. "At this point it doesn't look like that's going to happen."
Shortly before Pelosi addressed reporters, Smith walked his comments back in a tweet, saying he "misspoke."
[Gallery not loading above? Click here for more photos » arkansasonline.com/110pelosi/]
"I completely support the speaker's effort," he told reporters later in the day. "She knows a heck of a lot more than I do."
Other prominent members of the Democratic caucus who earlier in the week had suggested it was time for the trial to get underway appeared to defend Pelosi on Thursday. Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said in a brief interview that he understood what Pelosi is doing in fighting for witnesses. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said that her earlier comments had been misunderstood and that she supported Pelosi's strategy.
"She's going to send it over when she's ready to send it over," Feinstein said.
Republican aides said divisions in the Democratic ranks have emboldened McConnell, who has vowed to start the trial without any deal to hear from witnesses or obtain new documents that the Trump administration repeatedly has refused to provide.
McConnell has also declined to release the resolution that the Senate will vote on detailing the procedures for the trial, as Pelosi has demanded.
"The wall has crumbled beneath her," taunted the No. 3 Senate Republican, John Barrasso of Wyoming. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said Pelosi "has zero leverage" and "is trying to make the most out of a very bad situation of her own creation."
Rep. Jim Costa, D-Calif., a moderate Democrat, said that his colleagues trusted Pelosi but that their patience would not be infinite.
"There's just a whole lot of reasons why it has to be sooner than later," he said. "You've got the Senate Democrats who obviously understand their own timeline and their circumstances that we have to be mindful of -- the fact that you've got the presidential elections that are moving forward ... I just think there's a shelf life to this."
Information for this article was contributed by Nicholas Fandos of The New York Times; by Billy House, Jordan Fabian and Laura Litvan of Bloomberg News; by Mike DeBonis and Rachael Bade of The Washington Post; and by Lisa Mascaro, Mary Clare Jalonick, Laurie Kellman, Alan Fram, Andrew Taylor, Darlene Superville and Padmananda Rama of The Associated Press.
A Section on 01/10/2020