CNN chief political correspondent Dana Bash floated the idea that Rep. Adam Smith may have been threatened by House Speaker Pelosi after he split with her on her impeachment strategy.
The House Armed Services Committee chairman said early Thursday morning that he believed it was time for Pelosi to turn the articles of impeachment over to the Senate after withholding them for weeks in an attempt to pressure Republicans into holding additional hearings from witnesses.
“I think it was perfectly advisable for the speaker to try and leverage that to get a better deal, but at this point, it doesn’t look like that’s gonna happen, and, yes, I think it is time to send the impeachment to the Senate and let Mitch McConnell be responsible for the fairness of the trial,” Smith said. “He ultimately is.”
Hours later, Smith, 54, reversed his remarks and claimed he had “misspoke” when he split with Pelosi on impeachment. He tweeted, “I misspoke this morning, I do believe we should do everything we can to force the Senate to have a fair trial. If the Speaker believes that holding on to the articles for a longer time will help force a fair trial in the Senate, then I wholeheartedly support that decision.”
I am concerned that Senator McConnell won’t have a fair trial and I am with the Speaker that we should do everything we can to ensure he does. Ultimately, I do want the articles sent to the Senate for the very simple reason that I want the impeachment process to go forward.
— Rep. Adam Smith (@RepAdamSmith) January 9, 2020
When the Washington state Democrat’s reversal was announced on-air, Bash suggested that Pelosi may have threatened his position as chairman over his remarks and forced him to tweet the reversal.
“You know Adam Smith. He’s a very serious guy. He actually is not somebody who’s on TV a lot. He appeared to say what he thought. Maybe he misspoke when it comes to conveying that publicly,” Bash said. “And yeah. We don’t know what happened behind the scenes, but if it wasn’t the speaker, somebody called and said, ‘Hi, remember that you are the chairman of the Armed Services Committee. You like that role, right? You want to keep that role, right?’”
She added, “Maybe it wasn’t the speaker, but people I’m sure were reminding him, maybe even in his own staff. Who knows?”
Several other Democrats have broken with Pelosi on the issue of withholding impeachment. It is not yet clear when she will move the articles to the Senate.
