It doesn’t seem like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s announcement that he has the votes to start the Senate impeachment trial without witnesses was enough to break House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) in their stalemate over the impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump.
“Sadly, Leader McConnell has made clear that his loyalty is to the President and not the Constitution,” Pelosi wrote in a letter to her Democratic colleagues on Tuesday in response to McConnell’s announcement. “Leader McConnell has insisted that the approach under consideration is identical to those of the Clinton trial and that ‘fair is fair.’ This is simply not true.”
“This process is not only unfair but designed to deprive Senators and the American people of crucial documents and testimony,” she continued.
The Democratic leader repeated her call for McConnell to release a resolution laying out the process of the impeachment trial in full.
“It is important that he immediately publish this resolution, so that, as I have said before, we can see the arena in which we will be participating, appoint managers and transmit the articles to the Senate,” she wrote.
Pelosi has been withholding the two impeachment articles from the Senate since the impeachment vote in December, saying that she wanted to make sure McConnell would arrange a fair trial.
She and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) have pushed McConnell to allow witnesses in the trial, particularly after former National Security Adviser John Bolton announced he would testify in front of the Senate if he were subpoenaed.