Donald Trump believes that if he holds his breath until he turns purply-orange, the courts might just agree that he has not really been impeached. Or even unpeach him and go after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi instead. After all, what’s the point of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell filling the courts with flying monkeys if they won’t attack the Constitution on command?
But back in the real world, The Washington Post reports that the impeachment standoff is going nowhere. Republicans are happy enough to simply mock the delay and make “We will sue you” noises, while Democrats ask for little things like witnesses, evidence, and rules according to which the Senate trial will take place. The Post notes that this looks to be a “long standoff” in which neither Pelosi nor McConnell looks set to blink.
However, there’s a good reason to bet on Pelosi—maybe an even better reason than just the fact that always betting on Pelosi has turned out to be a pretty good strategy.
As things stand, nothing is going to happen in the House or the Senate between now and Jan. 6. But that doesn’t mean nothing is going to happen. Over the weekend, a series of emails gave new insight into how Trump clamped down on military assistance to Ukraine immediately after what he called a “perfect” phone call. That wasn’t the end of it. Those emails also demonstrated that members of the White House staff from top to bottom knew that what Trump was doing by placing a hold on the aid was flat-out illegal.
The fearful notes from Office of Management and Budget official Michael Duffey spoke both to efforts to cover up Trump’s action and to knowledge that he was committing a direct violation of the Impoundment Control Act. Those notes have only increased demands for testimony from Duffey and from other witnesses suggested by Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
McConnell thinks he’s being clever by refusing to say how the Senate will conduct a trial, because he wants Pelosi to both hand over the articles and name managers, and then surprise her with some absurd process in which Trump is exonerated by default. The problem in that is that Republicans in the House were right about one thing: The process there did move along too quickly.
Every day that the trial doesn’t start is a day in which new evidence, and new crimes, are likely to be unearthed.
One other thing that McConnell and Trump should be contemplating: There are only two articles of impeachment … for now. With evidence emerging that White House officials were aware that Trump was committing a genuine crime, and renewed evidence that Trump’s actions in withholding funds allocated for Ukraine were directly political, it’s entirely possible that new charges could originate with either the House Intelligence Committee or the House Judiciary Committee.
By the time the articles arrive in the Senate, they could be more numerous. Or they could be supplemented by additional reports. Rather than serving as the basis of a rushed mock exoneration of Trump, what Republicans criticized as a “thin case” is only getting thicker.