Déjà vu all over again: for the second time in just over two years, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has led the House to accelerate President Trump’s impeachment process, citing the urgent need to free America from a dangerous threat in the White House – and then changed and took a long time to hand over the charges to the Senate for trial.
The House passed an impeachment article on Wednesday accusing Trump of “inciting insurrection” for his role in his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on January 6. But on Friday, Pelosi refused to say when he would send the Senate, forcing him to withdraw all other business until the trial is concluded. “You will be the first to know when we announce that we are going there,” she said haughtily to reporters.
Pelosi played the same games with Trump’s first impeachment, which passed the House on December 18, 2019, but was not submitted to the Senate until January 16, 2020.
“I’ll send them when I’m ready,” she huffed then, when even allies like Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.) Were saying, “I really think it’s time to start.”
She was holding back to pressure Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell to make the rules of the trial more favorable to Democrats. It didn’t work – and it just made his posture look more pathetic. Now she is taking too long to help new President Biden.
Clearly, Pelosi does not see impeachment as a constitutional remedy to correct serious errors, but as a way of playing political games.