A Democratic leader in the Congressional Progressive Caucus brushed aside the idea from a pro-impeachment witness that President Trump was not really impeached because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has not sent over both articles to the Senate yet.
Noah Feldman, a Harvard Law School professor, wrote an opinion piece in Bloomberg Thursday saying that House Democrats’ refusal to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate, thus delaying a trial, means that an impeachment of the president has not occurred.
Feldman was among three constitutional attorneys who testified before the House Judiciary Committee that the president committed impeachable offenses.
“Both parts are necessary to make an impeachment under the Constitution: The House must actually send the articles and send managers to the Senate to prosecute the impeachment. And the Senate must actually hold a trial,” he wrote. “If the House does not communicate its impeachment to the Senate, it hasn’t actually impeached the president. If the articles are not transmitted, Trump could legitimately say that he wasn’t truly impeached at all.”
But Rep. Ro Khanna, who represents Silicon Valley and is a Yale Law School graduate, brushed off Feldman’s argument.
“I think Noah Feldman is doing what law professors try to do. I went to law school. They try to come up with some clever take to sound original,” Khanna, 43, told the Washington Examiner.
“But as one of my professors once told me on my paper, he said, ‘This is both original and good. The problem is the parts that are good aren’t original, and the parts that are original are not good,’” Khanna said. “And that’s how I felt when I read Noah’s article.”
The piece was “rambling” and defied common sense, Khanna said.
According to Khanna, the delay in sending the articles over to the Senate is a strategy by Democrats to get Chief Justice John Roberts, who will preside in a Senate trial, to come up with rules in the Senate trial that Democrats deem fair.
“Roberts will come up with the rules, and he’s empowered to,” Khanna said, noting Pelosi is “just asking for a fair trial.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell scoffed at Pelosi for holding back the articles of impeachment.
“It’s beyond me how the speaker and Democratic leader in the Senate think withholding the articles of impeachment and not sending them over gives them leverage,” McConnell told reporters Friday. “Frankly, I’m not anxious to have the trial.”
Khanna said such statements wrongly neglect the chief justice’s presiding role — though his decisions can be overturned by a simple Senate majority, per impeachment rules.
“It’s not about leverage. It’s about the Constitution. The Constitution doesn’t give McConnell the right to do the trial. It would be as if Speaker Pelosi says, ‘Let me do the rules of the trial.’ She’s not saying that,” Khanna said. “If you look at Senate Rule 5, it affirms the Constitution with the chief justice as the presiding officer. So it shouldn’t be a negotiation between Schumer and McConnell or any politician.”
Pelosi has yet to announce the Democratic lawmakers who will serve as managers to prosecute the impeachment case in the Senate, and no timeline has been announced as to when the speaker will appoint them.
[Read more: Veteran House GOP impeachment manager warns Democrats: ‘Huge mistake’ to hold articles as leverage]
