By Judi McLeod ——Bio and Archives--January 15, 2020
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“No matter what the U.S. Senate does, President Donald Trump will be "impeached forever," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told ABC's "This Week”. "Let's be optimistic about the future, a future that will not have Donald Trump in the White House one way or another," Pelosi told host George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. "Ten months we will have an election if we don't have him removed sooner. But, again, he'll be impeached forever.”
“Pelosi said she plans to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate this week, and she also explained her delay:“Well, what I did say is, I would be consulting with my members this week, on Tuesday morning, at our regular caucus meeting, that we would vote to send them over, and we will determine in our meeting when we send them over. “But it -- we have never -- I have always said I would send them over. So there shouldn't be any mystery to that. “What we did want, though, and we think we accomplished in the past few weeks, is that we wanted the public to see the need for witnesses, witnesses with firsthand knowledge of what happened, documentation which the president has prevented from coming to the Congress as we review this.
“Pelosi said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) "will be accountable to the American people" if he doesn't call witnesses such as former National Security Advisor John Bolton: "I think that he will be accountable to the American people for that. Over 70 percent of the American people think that the president should have those witnesses testify," Pelosi said. "So, again, it is -- it's about a fair trial. They take an oath to take -- have a fair trial. And we think that would be with witnesses and documentation. So, that dynamic has -- now the ball is in their court to either do that, or pay a price for not doing it." “Pelosi thus indicated that she's been playing political games with the month-long delay. “Pelosi also repeated her assertion that by failing to subpoena witnesses -- witnesses the House didn't bother waiting for -- McConnell and Senate Republicans will be staging an unfair trial. “And Pelosi said if Senate Republicans vote to simply dismiss the case, it will be a "cover-up." "Dismissing is a cover-up. Dismissing is a cover-up," Pelosi repeated. "If they want to go that route, again, the senators who are thinking now about voting for witnesses or not, they will have to be accountable for not having a fair trial.”
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