But several Democrats have said that part of Pelos’ calculation is waiting for Senate Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to reach a 50-50 Senate power-sharing agreement. something they are still negotiating.
“They have now informed us that they are ready to receive,” Pelosi told Senate reporters on Thursday, adding that “there are other questions about how a trial will proceed.”
“I will not tell you when it will happen,” she adds, refusing to give further details.
The House voted on January 13 to accuse Trump, with a week left in his term, as every Democrat and nearly a dozen Republicans have warned he poses a clear and current danger to the country.
But Pelosi has so far not forwarded the article to the Senate, a process that involves the house’s executives delivering the paperwork over the Capitol dome. This is a similar move to Pelosi’s handling of Trump’s first indictment in December 2019, when Democrats waited weeks over Congress’ winter recess to deliver the articles while carefully choreographing the start of the Senate’s trial.
This time, the process is more complicated because the start of a Senate indictment would come as Trump is out of office and a newly inaugurated president, Joe Biden, is trying to lock his cabinet amid several national crises.
The Senate is fast approaching this week to approve key national security posts, but a hearing – which requires senators to sit in the chamber six days a week for its duration – will certainly delay the process for at least some of Biden’s nominees. .
Schumer and McConnell have further complicated matters, but they have not yet reached an agreement for the Senate government, which according to several Democrats will have a major impact on when Pelosi sends the article and the trial begins. The biggest obstacle to reaching an agreement is McConnell’s demand that Schumer preserve the legislative filibuster, which the Democrats rejected.
However, unlike in 2019, when almost all Republicans were in favor of Trump’s acquittal, his fate in the Senate remains uncertain. It is unlikely that 17 Republicans would vote to convict their former president, but key GOP senators, including McConnell, say they are still undecided and that the calculation of the GOP conference could change quickly.
Some Republicans are questioning the constitutionality of holding an indictment now that Trump is no longer in office. Some have also complained that the Democrats’ attempt to accuse Trump – despite his involvement in the January 6 riots in the Capitol that killed five people – would undermine Biden’s calls for national unity during his inauguration ceremony on Wednesday.
But Pelosi told reporters on Thursday that she was “not worried” about the argument.
“The president of the United States has committed an act of incitement to rebellion,” Pelosi said. ‘I do not think it is very unifying to say: Oh, let’s just forget it and move on. This is not how you unite. ”
“Just because he’s gone now – thank God – you do not say to a president, ‘Do what you want in the last months of your government. You’ll get a free-from-jail card ‘because people think you have to make it beautiful, beautiful and forget that people died here on January 6.’