Until the articles of impeachment arrive in the Senate, the president hasn't been impeached.
For example, a person isn't indicted until a prosecutor brings an indictment to court. Just like a president isn't impeached, until the House sends the articles of impeachment to the Senate.
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 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.
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.