McConnell Signs Hawley’s Resolution to Change Senate Rules, Dismiss Articles of Impeachment
McConnell told GOP senators the chamber will likely start the impeachment trial next week.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell signed a resolution by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) that dismisses the articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump:
Changing the rules would either require a two-thirds vote or for Republicans to deploy the “nuclear” option.
The resolution would give the House 25 days to send articles of impeachment over to the Senate. After that, a senator could offer a motion to dismiss “with prejudice for failure by the House of Representatives to prosecute such articles” with a simple majority vote, according to Hawley’s proposal.
McConnell has repeatedly lashed out at Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for delaying sending over the two articles of impeachment.
“This is what they have done: They have initiated one of the most grave and most unsettling processes in our Constitution and then refused to allow a resolution,” he said on Thursday.
‘The Speaker began something that she herself predicted would be ‘so divisive to the country’ … and now she is unilaterally saying it cannot move forward towards a resolution,” he added.
McConnell told GOP senators the chamber will likely start the impeachment trial next week. Three senators at the lunch said the leader suggested the senators get ready not to go home next weekend.
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) said McConnell basically told them the senators have no reason to stay in DC this weekend, “but don’t expect to be home next weekend.”
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has held onto the articles of impeachment since the House passed them in December. Senate Democrats have pressured Pelosi to give them the articles, but she confirmed this morning that she will release the articles when she is ready.
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Comments
The old lady of the house will release them during her next minstrel cycle. ( yes, I deliberately misspelled it )
May the farce be with you
This entire business has been nothing but a menstrual show in the first place.
Won’t surprise me when Nancy comes out in black face.
She climbed on her menstrual cycle and ran them all over.
Just my opinion. I believe Pelosi was hoping to hold the articles throughout the election season to use as a campaign weapon against the Senate republicans. You know the type. “Unless you vote the people out of office the American People will never get a fair trial against Trump.”
Politically, I think it made sense for the Dems to hold onto the articles until after the holidays. If they’d sent them over immediately, McConnell could have held a quickie vote and it all would have been lost as normal folks enjoyed Christmas and New Years.
But at this point it makes no sense to keep holding out. Every day the charges look less and less important and more and more political to the average joe and jane.
We know the Battle Turtle is gosh-darned serious when he unleashes the word “likely.”
Schumer quails.
THE BEACONS OF THE SENATE MAJORITY ARE LIT!
THE BEACONS ARE LIT!
*Hope unlooked-for! (the 2d3 buff gives +1 Hope for 2-3 hours).
Which of the turtles is that, Michaelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, or Donatello?
The tortoise that beat the hare-brained Democra….er…..hare
was a turtle right?
Bert the Turtle from the old “Duck and Cover” PSA cartoons.
Most likely, Pelosi is also lit.
My belief is that Nan hoped there would be an actual crime found if they kept the doors open to the impeachment. They know they don’t have anything and were hoping that a Bolton or McGhan would reveal some inside info that could be added to the nonsense in their articles. Now that that hope has been dashed she will cough up the articles.
Can you believe how all the “politicians” self-project what they are, non-stop?
The self-projecting politicians can’t imagine normal honest Americans who are not corrupt like they are………….
It’s no longer the “nuclear option”. Thanks to Harry Reid, changing the rules of the Senate with a simple majority vote is now “precedent”.
Um, changing the rules by a majority vote has always been the case. Reid had nothing to do with it. Reid’s nuclear option was getting rid of the filibuster for nominations.
As usual, Milhouse must be impaled on the point he deliberately misses.
Reid was the initiator of changing rules, any rules, by majority vote when convenient for his party.
No, he was not. You are simply not telling the truth. It has always been the rule that the majority of the senate can set its rules. The method of challenging a ruling by the chair was used several times before Reid ever became majority leader.
What made Reid’s move a “nuclear option” was not how he did it, but the fact that he abolished the filibuster in a whole area where it had once applied. It’s a nuclear option because it can’t ever be reversed.
The way of changing the rules is to ask for a parliamentary ruling from the Chair (who will then state the old rule), then to assert that the Chair is wrong and put it to a vote of all the senators, where 51 votes wins and overrules the chair.
Thenceforth, the rule is whatever the majority just said it is.
The “nuclear option” was to apply this method for the Senate rules for confirming nominees.
Exactly. And it was called the “nuclear option” because there was no going back from it. Once the filibuster is gone it’s gone forever, because neither side will trust the other to put it back.
I remember bringing my family to DC to see the sights, which included the Senate chamber. When we showed up there in the visitors’ gallery, there were Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell (and some pages), nobody else, and Reid and McConnell were going at each other rather testily about Reid’s plan to use the nuclear option on sub-SCOTUS federal judge nominations. It was about principle, at least from Mitch’s side since technically he could not stop it. The emotions were real; it wasn’t just shadow boxing. I think it was great for my kids to see that, on a topic that was being covered heatedly in the news too.
As we know he did that, then after he retired and Mitch became majority leader, he did the same back at the Dems for SCOTUS nominees.
The difference between supreme court nominations and all other nominations was always artificial, and was never going to last. There was no way to justify it, and everyone knew that the first time a supreme court nomination was filibustered the majority (whoever it was) would blow through it.
Pelosi can’t send the articles of impeachment to the Senate — she accidentally deleted them along with roughly 30,000 emails of hers about yoga, her children and grandchildren, and kickbacks from Ukraine and Chinese businesses
I suppose Hawley rewrote his resolution. The original version started the clock when the House Dems voted to impeach and the clock ran out this Sunday.
No matter. Cocaine Mitch always plays for keeps. Always.
If they’re going to start the trial next week, they would need the 25 days to have run out. I don’t see why you think that Hawley changed it.
Perfect. My dog ate my articles of impeachment is not admissible.
Pelosi didn’t count on our kerfuffle with Iran. Her delay forwarding the articles assured that DJT, that danger to democracy, the republic, the Constitution, and international order, and as well as being an orange man, was still in charge when said kerfuffle occurred. This was exactly the type of situation she claimed should not be managed by DJT due to the dangers he posed. But now that it’s been handled to our general advantage, she looks like a dope, because, once again, DJT has performed above the level the Dems claimed to be his ceiling.
So (1) changing the Senate rules requires a 2/3 vote or a nuclear option, and
(2) even the Hawley resolution, if adopted, gives the House 25 days. Maybe those 25 days have run already though.
Wouldn’t they need to satisfy (1) via the nuclear option, before starting the Senate trial next week?
Artichoke, as you yourself wrote just above, changing the rules is not a “nuclear option”, and it doesn’t take 2/3. It never has. The nuclear option was getting rid of the filibuster for nominations. Getting rid of the legislative filibuster would be another nuclear option, one that nobody has yet dared to set off.
Yeah, I’m right, I mean you’re right. 🙂
Artichoke, it appears to me something must have changed. Cocaine Mitch is telling his caucus to plan on staying in DC through next weekend. The way Hawley’s resolution was originally written this impeachment nonsense would be killed deader than dead 5 minutes into Monday’s session.
Folks, this is a True Believers blog, and I am no one’s True Believer. I am really one of the elusive independent voters, Diogenes in search of an honest man. I don’t like Trump. Didn’t vote for him. Didn’t vote for The Bitch either. Cast a write-in.
That said, I think impeachment is a steaming crock of shit from here to the moon and back. I am amazed, amused, and mondo pissed off at the Democrats, who have managed to be even more ridiculous than Trump’s ridiculous tweets and assorted craziness.
The withholding of the articles is a god damn joke. I’m not a Republican loafer licker by any stretch, but I am on their side on the impeachment farce. McConnell is as smart a weasel as any of them, and I wish him well as he uses his skills to screw Nancy Pelosi, metaphorically only.
This circus is bad for the country, just as the 1998 Clinton impeachment circus was bad for the country. This should not stand, and if Pelosi doesn’t deliver the articles then the Senate should bury the whole f’in thing. This is bad for the country, and (pardon my old school naivete) I say country comes first. Kill me now.
RandomCrank, it’s very kind of you to swing by and praise your virtues of independence and truth geekiness. Virtues which we clearly can’t share because we are true believers communing on a true believer’s blog.
True believers in what, I am forced to ask.
Thanks in advance for your profound and what will no doubt turn out to be life altering insights.
Sincerely your moral and intellectual inferior you rascally free thinker you.
Arminious.
You’re very welcome, my child. LOL
Oh please, so far McConnell hasn’t had the balls to actually do anything. So I’ll believe that the Senate will “change the rules and dismiss articles of impeachment” if and when it actually happens. Until then it’s all just the same talk, talk, talk and no actual action.
End this farce, please. Time for the Congress to do things that actually benefit the American people.