Harry Reid isn’t dead, and he’s no longer in Congress. Yet he knew that the previously rushed impeachment effort would stall once it was supposed to head to the Senate.
The Nevada Democrat and former Senate majority leader said in an interview with Slate, published just last week, that we would end up exactly where we are now. I’m sure that’s a coincidence.
In the interview, he says almost everything House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said when she declined to send the Senate right away the two approved articles of impeachment and refused to say even whether she would send them at all in order to avoid having Senate Republicans acquit President Trump.
“So far, we haven’t seen anything that looks fair to us,” Pelosi said Wednesday night, shortly after the votes were in.
Here’s what Reid said in the Dec. 9 interview: “I frankly think it’s not going to be a fair negotiation [on the Senate trial] because it can’t be fair if one side doesn’t want anything to happen.”
He also said, “To think of a dark mark on your legacy. The fact that a president of the United States would be impeached. Conviction? Perhaps not. Impeached, though? I think we’re headed in that direction.”
In addition, he said, “I don’t see anything happening quickly. I think we’re going to have to have a presidential election first.”
Wow, what a coincidence that the most ferocious, hyperpartisan Senate leader in history, the one responsible for breaking the institution with the nuclear option, believes Democrats should take yet another unprecedented action and impeach without a trial.
Pelosi and House Democrats are doing exactly what Reid would have done.
