House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is considering withholding the Democrats’ articles of impeachment — passed without a single Republican vote — from the U.S. Senate in an attempt to pressure the Republican-controlled Senate to cave to Democratic demands on how to conduct a “fair” impeachment trial. But constitutional lawyer and conservative commentator Mark Levin says such an act would be “brazen[ly]” unconstitutional and would provide Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell with a golden opportunity.
“So far we haven’t seen anything that looks fair to us,” Pelosi told reporters after the vote Wednesday. “That would’ve been our intention, but we’ll see what happens over there.”
As Politico pointed out, Pelosi’s comments “echo suggestions raised by other Democrats throughout the day” and “inject new uncertainty into the impeachment timetable and send the House and Senate lurching toward a potential institutional crisis.”
“Though the House adopted two articles of impeachment charging Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of congressional investigations, it must pass a second resolution formally naming impeachment managers to present the case in the Senate,” Politico explains. “That second vehicle triggers the official transmission of articles to the Senate.”
In a series of posts on social media early Thursday, Levin called out Pelosi for considering the “brazen unconstitutional act” and laid out a plan for McConnell and his fellow Senate Republicans for how to respond if Democrats should got that route.
“Nancy Pelosi was apparently advised by leftwing Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe to delay sending the impeachment to the Senate. So she’s unilaterally sitting on the impeachment. This is another brazen unconstitutional act,” Levin wrote, in a thread that’s starting to gain some attention online.
“Here’s what Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans must do in response: The Senate has the sole power under the Constitution to adjudicate an impeachment. Therefore, Pelosi is attempting to obstruct the Senate’s power to act on its constitutional authority,” the Fox News host continued.
“McConnell should immediately put an end to this and declare the impeachment null and void as the speaker has failed to complete the impeachment process by timely sending it to the Senate for adjudication,” Levin added.
“McConnell has no less authority to unilaterally make such a decision than Pelosi does to withhold the administrative notification of an impeachment to the Senate either indefinitely or [with] conditions,” he concluded. “Her effort to cripple the presidency [and] blackmail the Senate must be defeated.” Levin’s four-part thread begins below:
1. Nancy Pelosi was apparently advised by leftwing Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe to delay sending the impeachment to the Senate. So she’s unilaterally sitting on the impeachment. This is another brazen unconstitutional act.
— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) December 19, 2019
As The Daily Wire pointed out after Pelosi’s loaded comments at the presser Wednesday evening, her suggestion that Republicans might not be “fair” in how they conduct the impeachment trial comes “after Democrats held secret hearings for weeks to develop the basis for their impeachment attempt and, according to Republicans, selectively leaked portions of the depositions to the media that were beneficial for advancing the Democrats’ narrative.”
Trump, meanwhile, appears to be enjoying himself post-impeachment. At a rally in Michigan, Trump referenced the Democrats’ big vote, telling the massive crowd: “They want to impeach you. They want to do worse than that. By the way, it doesn’t really feel like we’re being impeached. The country is doing better than ever before. We did nothing wrong, and we have tremendous support in the Republican Party like we’ve never had before.”
Related: Morning After Impeachment, Trump Slaps Dems By Pointing Out What Was ‘Historic’ About It