In his first remarks since the House voted to impeach President Trump Wednesday evening, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) plans to suggest House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is “too afraid” to send the articles to the Senate.
According to the Washington Post, McConnell will speak from the Senate floor at 9:30 a.m. Thursday and plans to criticize House Democrats’ “shoddy work product.” He also intends to criticize the House’s process, calling the impeachment “the most rushed, least thorough, and most unfair impeachment inquiry in modern history” and the two articles “fundamentally unlike any articles that any prior House of Representatives has ever passed.”
“The framers built the Senate to provide stability,” he plans to say. “To keep partisan passions from boiling over. Moments like this are why the United States Senate exists.”
Pelosi is also scheduled to speak from the House floor Thursday morning, when she’ll likely explain her Wednesday evening suggestion that she may withhold sending the House’s articles of impeachment to the Senate until there’s a clearer view of how the upper chamber plans to carry out an impeachment trial. McConnell has thus far refused to work with the minority party to plan the trial proceedings and has indicated publicly that he’ll rubber stamp whatever procedure the White House requests.
