Don’t bother, they’re here

In a comic postscript to yesterday’s farce, Nancy Pelosi is threatening to withhold delivery of the House Democrats’ two impeachment articles to the Senate. Politico’s Kyle Cheney et al. have the story here. As of this morning, it is the top story at Politico.

By withholding the articles of impeachment from the Senate, Pelosi hopes to extract the terms of a trial procedure that she deems favorable to the Democrats. Politico quotes Pelosi speaking at a news conference moments after passage of the impeachment articles: “So far we haven’t seen anything that looks fair to us.” She stated that it had been her intention to transmit the articles, “but we’ll see what happens over there.”

The Politico story explains that Pelosi may sit on a second resolution naming impeachment managers for the Senate trial. By sitting on the resolution, she would hope to pressure Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell into adopting a trial procedure that precludes summary dismissal or otherwise suits the Democrats. The Politico story adds, however, that Pelosi failed to make her intentions entirely clear in the chaos of her press conference.

I’m not given to predictions, but here is my guess. As a means of coercing Cocaine Mitch, I should think this will be a somewhat less successful tactic than the old cover threat to shoot the dog if you don’t buy a copy of the National Lampoon.

UPDATE: For what it’s worth, the CNN guy elaborates in the tweet below.

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