A conservative GOP lawmaker introduced a resolution Thursday to censure Nancy Pelosi for not sending two articles of impeachment the House approved in December to the Senate for a trial.
“Speaker Pelosi’s decision to hold the articles of impeachment against President Trump in a pathetic and unconstitutional attempt to extract concessions from the Senate is an unprecedented abuse of power,” Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-Ala.), a staunch Trump backer, said in a statement.
“House Democrats made the misguided decision to rush through the most legally unsound and factually unsupported articles of impeachment in the history of this country, and they can’t now insist that the Senate fix their shoddy, incomplete work,“ said Byrne.
Pelosi said Thursday she would forward the articles of impeachment — accusing Trump of abusing the power of his office and obstructing Congress — to the Senate “when I’m ready.”
Meanwhile, 26 senators signed on to a separate resolution from Sen. Lindsey Graham demanding that Pelosi immediately forward the two articles of impeachment against President Trump to the Senate.
The Graham resolution knocks Pelosi for claiming “the power to effectively veto a resolution passed by a duly elected majority of the House of Representatives” and that her refusal to forward the articles to the Senate was a “gross infringement on the constitutional authority of the Senate to try impeachment.”The House speaker said she wants Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to reveal the rules of the upcoming Senate trial.
That demand cut no ice with McConnell, who replied that the Senate could vote on hearing from witnesses but only after the articles were sent to the upper chamber and after a trial began.
“The Constitution grants the House the power to censure its members, the most serious rebuke the House can give a member short of expulsion,” Byrne continued.
“An adopted censure resolution would require the offending member to stand in the well of the House and have the resolution read aloud. The last censure resolution adopted by the House occurred in 2010.”
The censure resolution was not expected to get anywhere in the Democrat-led House.
The House censure resolution was not expected to get anywhere in the Democrat-led lower chamber.
