House Will Vote Wednesday To Transmit Trump Impeachment Articles To Senate

The Democratic House of Representatives will hold a vote on Wednesday to send the articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump to the Senate, which would likely kick-off the long-awaited Senate trial as early as this week.

The trial can not start until Pelosi sends the articles to the Senate.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made the statement to Democrats privately on Tuesday.

Pelosi had been withholding the articles – abuse of power and obstruction of Congress – for around a month. Pelosi refused to release the articles until Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell supplied the Democratic House with a trial blueprint, outlining the rules and processes, for the trial. She had been outraged over McConnell’s previous statement that the White House and Senate would work in “total coordination” with one another.

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The trial would be the third time in U.S. history that a President underwent a Senate trial – President Andrew Johnson in 1868 and President Bill Clinton in 1998 were both impeached. President Richard Nixon also faced impeachment charges, but he resigned before the hearings in 1974.

Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) told reporters outside the Democratic House meeting on Tuesday that “everything” would be completed by the House of Representatives on Wednesday. Everything incorporates the nomination of impeachment managers, a House referendum on the resolution to approve the articles, and the official transfer of the materials to the Senate.

“The resolution will be done tomorrow, the managers will be named, and the resolution will have take about a 10-minute debate, and we’ll vote on it and then send it, send everything over,” Cuellar stated.

In a private meeting with Democratic lawmakers, which took place early Tuesday morning, Pelosi provided a detailed account of her game-plan for Wednesday — sharing that she planned to appoint the team of House managers, who would serve as prosecutors, in the Senate hearing. The officials who released this information spoke on anonymous terms.

Unless further discrepancies or obstacles are presented, Pelosi’s strategic agenda would kick-off the Senate trial within the next week. The appointed House managers would walk the articles and finalized documents across Capitol Hill to commence the trial.

Article by Emily Bevacqua