Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell signed onto Sen. Josh Hawley’s (R-MO) resolution to change the Senate’s rules which would allow the Senate to vote to dismiss Democrats’ articles of impeachment if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has not submitted the articles of impeachment within the next 25 days.
New York Times reporter Nicholas Fandos reported on Thursday that McConnell had signed onto the resolution as a co-sponsor to the resolution “to change Senate impeachment rules to allow the chamber to dismiss the House’s articles if they are not sent over within 25 days.”
Inbox: @senatemajldr has signed on as a co-sponsor of @HawleyMO's resolution to change Senate impeachment rules to allow the chamber to dismiss the House's articles if they are not sent over within 25 days.
— Nicholas Fandos (@npfandos) January 9, 2020
The Hill reported that the Republican-controlled Senate would be able to dismiss the articles of impeachment with a simple majority vote.
Speaking on the floor of the Senate on Thursday, McConnell slammed Pelosi and the House Democrats for spending “12 weeks undermining the institution of the presidency with an historically unfair and subjective impeachment and now, for the sequel, they’ve come after the institution of the Senate as well.”
“When you take a step back, what has really happened over the past three weeks?” McConnell continued. “When you step back from the political noise and the pundits discussing ‘leverage’ that never existed, what have House Democrats actually done?”
“This is what they have done: They have initiated one of the most grave and most unsettling processes in our Constitution and then refused to allow a resolution,” McConnell added. “The Speaker began something that she herself predicted would be ‘so divisive to the country’ and now she is unilaterally saying it cannot move forward towards a resolution.”
