Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell endorsed a resolution Thursday to dismiss the partisan impeachment trial expected in the Senate following the passage of impeachment articles.
McConnell joins a dozen other GOP co-sponsors who have signed onto the resolution put forward by Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri.
The resolution comes as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has refused to hand over the articles of impeachment passed by the House days before Christmas over to the upper chamber for the next phase of impeachment to begin.
Pelosi has held the articles hostage to elicit concessions from Republicans on how a trial in the Senate ought to be run in a desperate effort to save the collapsing attempt to reverse the 2016 presidential election.
Throughout their rushed investigation in the lower chamber motivated by allegations that Trump is a clear and urgent danger to the republic, Democratic lawmakers failed to surface any incriminating evidence against the president, let alone actions worthy of a “high crime and misdemeanor.”
Instead, the House proceedings were a trainwreck for Democrats hoping to drum up enough public support to apply adequate pressure on Senate Republicans to consider ousting a president of their own party. To the contrary, public support for impeachment went underwater after the proceedings and three Democrats defected from the party on the measure. Despite the lack of evidence, Democrats voted to impeach the president anyway marking a major step closer to achieving the top item on their policy agenda since even before Trump took office.
Weeks after the articles have been passed, Pelosi has continued to withhold the articles from the Senate to allow a trial to begin undercutting the “urgent” nature of the process further exposing the malicious motivations of the proceedings. In a bid to save the effort, Pelosi has called on McConnell to pledge calling additional witnesses to testify in the trial before handing the articles over, though McConnell has shown no signs of bowing to Pelosi’s demands.
