I don’t think that’s relevant. They aren’t going to be in a jury for a regular court trial. Impeachment proceedings have their own rules to follow.
Since Trump’s crimes are against the country, technically you wouldn’t be able to use any US citizen on a jury by the logic of Dershowitz, so that would rule out SCOTUS as well. But again I don’t think it matters, this isn’t a regular trial.
Excuse me while I bang my head against a wall.
Pelosi seems to be determined to give Pence a 24-hour ultimatum to invoke the 25th, or Trump gets impeached.
Fine. She could have issued that ultimatum on Sunday, and Rep. Lieu’s impeachment resolution could be on the floor right now.
Instead, apparently she decided that the ultimatum needed to be in the form of a House resolution. To go on the floor immediately, it needed unanimous consent, which of course the Republicans blocked. So it will be voted on tomorrow.
And only then will the 24-hour clock start ticking, so impeachment won’t be debated until Wednesday, apparently.
The House leadership sure seems bound and determined to do nothing unless they’re absolutely forced to do something. By Wednesday, they’ll have burned up half the time between the insurrection and the inauguration. Wonder what excuses they can come up with to burn up the other half.
Being a Democrat is the most frustrating goddamn thing in the world. They’re gonna drive me bonkers between now and the inauguration. (Short trip, I know, but still.)
Could Pelosi be stalling for some reason…? I can’t imagine what that would be, you’d think the sooner the better, both for the country and politically for the Democratic Party (and for Pelosi herself).
Or maybe she is trying to be careful and not make this look rushed, to give it a greater chance to succeed?
I doubt that this is down to Pelosi being a coward or incompetent. Say whatever you want about her, she has never given any indication to me suggesting she is either of those things.
I’d like to think there is some undercurrents to these moves (5th dimensional thinking?).
Pelosi wants to make the refusal to implement the 25th amendment solution by Pence and the current Cabinet clear and public. Then she wants the Republican House members to publicly vote against impeachment. Both of these will be useful in future elections, especially in purple states.
Once the House impeaches the President, it shows up in the Senate (or maybe Pelosi holds onto it- ostensibly not to interfere with the start up of the new administration?) just as Schumer and McConnell are negotiating power sharing in the Senate. If it can be a useful tool for leveraging more Democratic power in the Senate, maybe that’s the best use of it.
At the very least, slow rolling the impeachment such that the entire new Senate is seated and the FBI investigations are made public (as well as the publication of the full Mueller report?) will make the full Senate trial more meaningful and create a very public record of Republican wrong doing (not to mention the electoral effect in the purple states of the public vote of their senators).
On the other hand, rushing an impeachment through allows a Senate still controlled by McConnell to hold a quick one day “trial” and vote the impeachment down and therefore out of the way without any presentation of evidence or witnesses testifying. Subsequent impeachments on the same topic would be worse publicly for the Democrats than the Republicans, so essentially, it would shield Trump from any impeachment based on new evidence uncovered by the FBI.
I don’t know if any of the above is actually in play, but if it is, I can see it justifying the current timetable.
Why does that matter? It won’t go to the Senate until after the inauguration anyway.
I guess I’m not really sure why you think a day or two’s delay on impeachment matters. It’s not going to go to the Senate for months anyway. There’s essentially nothing the Democrats can do to get him out this week if Pence & McConnell won’t budge.
As for Pence and the 25th - it’s only likely to happen if Trump does something even more egregious this week. So maybe a House resolution gives Pence the maximum possible political cover for acting if he decides he needs/wants to.
And I also wonder if they want to take a day or two to draft the scope of the impeachment more thoroughly. If they have 3 months to assemble evidence, there’s no reason the scope should be limited to just the proximate incitement to insurrection. They should take that time to investigate all the criminal activity of this administration and present it to the Senate.
There’s no chance that Pence will invoke the 25th unless Trump actually personally pulls a gun on him (and he’s wisely not going anywhere near him). And there’s no point in sending articles of impeachment to the Senate before the Dems are in charge.
IANAL, not sure what the constitution stipulates. But the lawyer on CNN said that’s what he anticipates. It really is a novel stuation isn’t it? The courts of late haven’t been super friendly to Trump, either, and they’re probably about sick of the act.
You have to wonder if Trump has already written up his own “get out of jail free” pardon papers, or if he’s still holding onto the plan of resigning and getting a pardon from Pence. I can’t imagine Pence is too inclined to give Trump anything at this point, unless he absolutely has to.
I’m wondering if some of it has to do with the fluidity of the situation and the fact that as information comes out the situation is getting more serious by the hour. We don’t want to undercharge him, with a little evidence I think it might get to treason.
PS- if anyone still has a working twitter account, could they please forward that link to @JohnCusack…?
I owe him.
( and that man Deserves a good laugh).
As much as I want Trump impeached, I’d rather they take an up/down vote on a censure and just be done with it and with him. I don’t think any good will ultimately come from impeaching him, as there won’t be enough votes to convict.
On the other hand, President Biden must be a successful president – he must. Or he will be the last democratic one.
Plus that will give time for the state prosecutors to indict Trump when he is out of office. With much of the evidence against him released, it should make voting to convict somewhat easier.
Pence can promise that he’ll pardon Trump after the resignation. Then tell him “No, sorry, I did not like your service. No deal. I will give you ten cents on the dollar”
Agreed. And McTurtle, and others of his ilk will be doing whatever it takes to stop Biden from doing anything good; even if this means damaging the country.
It occurred to me that they might…
The interesting bit to me is that a lot of presidents will give out these last-minute pardons and pull who knows what shit. Will he egg on protesters at the state level now, for instance? Now that he already knows he’s “fired” etc.?
One problem: IIRC the sales pitch around this has been “He’s a danger to the country and must be removed immediately.” But if you sit on the article, how urgent was it really? I’m not clear on that procedural matter-if they pass the article and hand it to Mitch/Senate, but he doesn’t do anything with it, can the Dems revive it when new Senate convenes?
If they can postpone the trial, it means they could also consider what last-minute shit he pulls before leaving office. If he knows there’s a trial coming, maybe he’ll behave?
A year ago he was impeached for the first time. Some people said, “The Senate won’t convict him. This is a waste of time.” But I think going on record was worth it because now that he’s done something outrageous again, we can point to the precedent. And hopefully senators who gave him a pass the first time can see how that turned out.
The “value” of impeachment was that they had a solid reason to do it, and there was time to have an outcome.
The way I view it now, the most important impeachment of all has already taken place: the people voted him out of office. That’s his impeachment.
I have no problem initiating impeachment proceedings as a matter of ceremony in these few days but I hope they drop it once Biden becomes president – politically, we need to forget the mother fucker. Let the legal system deal with him, but Biden needs to be successful. That is the thing. American liberal democracy itself is on trial, and it has to deliver tangible results.