This is a hypothetical question, not intended to refer to any real person, living or dead. I just want to know the law.
Suppose a President of the US is impeached, but the Speaker of the House is not happy with what she has heard from the Senate Majority Leader about his plans for the conduct of the Senate trial, so she wants to delay forwarding the articles of impeachment to the Senate until she extracts some concessions from the Senate leader regarding the trial.
Suppose further that the Senate leader is a man who is utterly without principles or honor.
Is there any way that the House Speaker can be sure that the Senate leader will not repudiate whatever concessions he grants, if necessary by holding procedural votes in the Senate that require only a majority to pass, as soon as the articles are forwarded?
My add-on question: If/when more evidence becomes available, such as from witnesses or Trump’s financials, can further articles of impeachment be drafted for submission in the same Senate trial?
The Senate has an absolute right to determine it’s own procedures. So even if Senate leadership were to make promises about how they intend to carry forward with any particular business, whether impeachment related or not, the Senate could later decide to alter any rule to overturn any such promise.
The constitution does not require any particular formal transmittal of articles of impeachment to the Senate upon passage in the House. Nor does the constitution absolutely mandate that the Senate hold a trial or provide any particular requirements for how a trial is to be carried out with few exceptions:
… if there is a trial the constitution requires 1) that the Senate, when sitting for the purpose of trying an impeached person, be “on oath or affirmation” and 2) that the Chief Justice preside if the president is on trial in the Senate.
The House could continue to draft and pass any article of impeachment for which they can gather a majority vote, even during the course of a trial in the Senate related to a previously passed article of impeachment.
The Senate would not be under any obligation to take up a newly passed article of impeachment during an ongoing trial. Indeed there is no language in the constitution compelling the Senate to hold a trial at all. There simply is language that says that the Senate has the sole power to try an impeachment.
Since you’re talking about Pelosi and McConnell (let’s just be open,) there is nothing Pelosi can do to ***make ***McConnell follow rules. He has the power, she doesn’t. All she can do is make him agree to certain things in public, and hope that public censure or criticism will make him abide by what he has agreed to. But she has no legal/procedural power over Mitch at all.
In any event, the OP asks about the law, not about the specific situation that inspired the question. Since this is in GQ, please restrict responses to factual answers regarding the law, as has been done so far. What might be done in reality as a matter of politics and interpersonal interactions is a topic for another forum.
It is my understanding that promises made by one congresscritter to another is still inviolate. Not by law but by tradition. Quid pro quos (funnily enough given what this is about) are how congress works at its root. “You vote for putting that military base in my district and I will vote next month to put that bridge in your district.” That sort of thing. If congresscritters cannot rely on that then they have nothing. I doubt even the most unreliable will break that. They may try to equivocate but the Speaker of the House is almost always an experienced politician able to smell such equivocation a mile away.
That said, beyond tradition to honor an agreement once made (and perhaps political pressure if the agreement is publicly known), I do not think there is any legal impediment to the senate majority leader making a promise to the speaker and then breaking it.
Since this is purely hypothetical, no, there is legal mechanism by which Pancy Nelosi can force Mcitch MConnell to honor any promises he makes. She can, of course, use the same sort of leverage that lawmakers typically use, such as conditioning House passage of one of McConnell’s pet bills on how he handles the trial. He’s fairly unpopular in his district right now and may even face a primary challenge, so he’s pushing for a lot of bills to benefit miners (who are a large part of his constituency).
A scenario where no trial can take place in which the hypothetical Senate leader can point to the hypothetical Speaker as the one to blame for the lack of trial because no documents are being handed over seems like a pure win for the hypothetical Senate leader.
I’m not sure why the hypothetical Senate leader would even pretend to grant any concessions to the hypothetical Speaker of the House in this case.
Because the senate majority leader wanted to dispose of the whole thing and get it behind them as swiftly as possible. This way it looms over them, never going away. In the meantime, the House could consider even more articles of impeachment if it was of a mind to.
Given recent developments, it seems that the Senate leadership is free to flout any and all traditions, with impunity, whenever it brings advantage to their party. So tradition carries no more weight in the present discussion than yesterday’s garbage.
This question does not reflect reality. It is the Chief Justice of the United States who conducts the trial of the President. We’ve done this question in soooooooo many forms before but it always comes out the same - Mitch McConnell would have no more power during the Trial of Trump than any other Senator.
Everything I’ve read contradicts that. Yes, the Chief Justice presides over the trial, but his powers are extremely limited — he is more like an arbitrator at a divorce settlement than a trial judge. In particular, any ruling he makes can be overturned by a majority vote of the Senate. And the majority leader has a great deal of actual power over majority votes.
I agree but the ONE thing ALL members of congress MUST rely on is keeping a promise made. Any one could renege but they will never be trusted again and their ability to broker deals of any sort go right out the window and their effectiveness drops to near zero.
This still works because there are very real and painful consequences that still exist to enforce compliance with keeping a promise made.
Now, that doesn’t mean they can’t be clever with the wording and get you on technicalities but they will keep a promise. As for being able to read the small print of a promise made the House Speaker is almost always an experienced politician who is unlikely to be hoodwinked in such a fashion (same as the senate majority leader).
A hypothetical Senate majority leader can thus drive the “trial” to any desired goal, at any convenient speed, for any political purpose. Their quandary is how to not obviously hold a mock “trial” that doesn’t outrage the voting public enough to endanger the Senate majority’s livelihood. Can a hypothetical [del]foreign asset[/del] Senate leader do that?