Posted on 12/19/2019 10:43:15 AM PST by Kaslin
Conservative radio host and constitutional scholar Mark Levin is slamming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after she threatened to withhold two articles of impeachment against President Trump from the Senate Wednesday night.
"Nancy Pelosi was apparently advised by leftwing Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe to delay sending the impeachment to the Senate. So she’s unilaterally sitting on the impeachment. This is another brazen unconstitutional act," Levin wrote Thursday morning on his Facebook page.
"Here’s what Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans must do in response: The Senate has the sole power under the Constitution to adjudicate an impeachment. Therefore, Pelosi is attempting to obstruct the Senate’s power to act on its constitutional authority. McConnell should immediately put an end to this and declare the impeachment null and void as the speaker has failed to complete the impeachment process by timely sending it to the Senate for adjudication," he continued. "McConnell has no less authority to unilaterally make such a decision than Pelosi does to withhold the administrative notification of an impeachment to the Senate either indefinitely or with conditions. Her effort to cripple the presidency and blackmail the Senate must be defeated.
As Matt covered last night, Pelosi threatened to hold the articles if the Senate doesn't agree to conduct a "fair trial."
A “Nan” o second.
VFG! Excellent.
Pelosi sounds like she wants to impeach McConnell. Maybe the House Democrats should impeach everyone they don’t agree with, realizing their dream of a Democrat utopian dictatorship.
Yep. She doesn’t have the power to override a House vote.
He should not do so unilaterally, he should have a senate vote, so it is the SENATE taking the action.
Meanwhile, imagine if republicans were in charge of the house, but with a narrow majority, and the democrats had gotten a half-dozen republicans and passed the impeachment articles.
Then suppose the republican majority leader said “I’m not going to send these to the senate”.
Would a SINGLE media outlet praise him, or would there be calls for his removal for illegally blocking a legally valid action of the house?
What power does Pelosi have to, without a vote of the house, simply decide not to send article of impeachment?
Meanwhile, I agree that if they are not transmitted within a reasonable period of time, the senate should vote to dismiss the indictment, just a a judge would throw out an indictment if the prosecutor failed to bring it to court within the statutory time limits.
Exactly. Until the House forwards the articles of impeachment to the Senate, all that has happened is that the House had a vote on something they didn’t act on.
A fair trial hasn't yet ocured.
The whole matter should be referred to the Supreme Court,
but that would only delay the matter further
before being thrown out as 'UnConstitutional'.
Whoever approved third-hand hearsay as credible legal evidence
in this kabuki operation should be removed, and any legal credentials cancelled for life .
McConnell has already suggested using the same Senate rules that Clinton was impeached under.
That’s not acceptable to the dems. They want to tilt the rules to unfair in their favor.
No one should have warned her on this. It should have simply gone to the Senate and then let the Senate make the statement and throw it out. Done.
A Lawfare blog response to what McConnell can do.
The Constitution does not by its express terms direct the Senate to try an impeachment. In fact, it confers on the Senate “the sole power to try,” which is a conferral of exclusive constitutional authority and not a procedural command. The Constitution couches the power to impeach in the same terms: it is the House’s “sole power.” The House may choose to impeach or not, and one can imagine an argument that the Senate is just as free, in the exercise of its own “sole power,” to decline to try any impeachment that the House elects to vote.
The current rules governing Senate practice and procedure do not pose an insurmountable problem for this maneuver. Senate leadership can seek to have the rules “reinterpreted” at any time by the device of seeking a ruling of the chair on the question, and avoiding a formal revision of the rule that would require supermajority approval. The question presented in some form would be whether, under the relevant rules, the Senate is required to hold an impeachment “trial” fully consistent with current rules—or even any trial at all. A chair’s ruling in the affirmative would be subject to being overturned by a majority, not two-thirds, vote.
The Senate has options for scuttling the impeachment process beyond a simple refusal to heed the House vote. The Constitution does not specify what constitutes a “trial,” and in a 1993 case involving a judicial impeachment, the Supreme Court affirmed that the Senate’s “sole power” to “try” means that it is not subject to any limitations on how it could conduct a proceeding. Senate leadership could engineer an early motion to dismiss and effectively moot the current rule’s call for the president or counsel to appear before the Senate. The rules in place provide at any rate only that “the Senate shall have power to compel the attendance of witnesses”: they do not require that any other than the president be called. Moreover, the Senate could adjourn at any time, terminating the proceedings and declining to take up the House articles. This is what happened in the trial of Andrew Johnson, in which the Senate voted on three articles and then adjourned without holding votes on the remaining eight.
** McConnell can Dismiss the house impeachment articles anytime. He has more cards then Pelosi.
Yep, Pelosi had leverage up until the point of the vote last night. The leverage now resides with McConnell.
Pelosi may be conniving, but she doesn’t have the brain power to match McConnell.
The next huge turd to meet the rotary blades will be the Ginsberg release of the Trump tacx returns, which regardless of truth the media will tell the dumbed down public prove he has been getting bribes from foreign powers. The entire scene is being contrived and foisted by satan using his little dead soul demon rats and media to accomplish it.
Fabricate from whole cloth articles for impeachment have been passed in a totally partisan House, thus lies are now standing as truths spewed from the seditious House of Representatives. Sedition gave rise to the bastard child Treason, and the ONLY way to defeat Treason now is to try and convict treasonous liars who crapped this demon rat egg upon the American Republic. Vindman, Taylor, Yavonivich, Ciarella, Brennan, Clapper, McCabe, and saint Comey must be tired for their treason. Anything short of that plays right into the evil rising in our midst.
This mess will be dismissed by the Senate as soon as it’s received and Nancy needs impeachment to go on forever to appease her radical base.... She’ll never send it to the senate. The Republicans should play hardball... No more legislation until the articles are turned over to the senate for dismissal.
ping
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