WASHINGTON –House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday said she would proceed “smartly and strategically” in determining when to send the House articles of impeachment to the Senate for a trial while also laying out the case for a House resolution that would reign in President Donald Trump’s war-making powers.
Prominent Democrats like Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California and have urged Pelosi to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate. Appearing unfazed, Pelosi said at Thursday’s news conference that she was pleased by how her strategy has affected the process.
“All we want to know is, what are the rules? It doesn’t mean that we have to agree with the rules, or we have to like the rules. We just want to know what they are.”
Of the ongoing tug-of-war between herself and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell over the rules of impeachment, Pelosi said, “Many things have been accomplished that are collateral benefit to this discussion.”
She said new information has come out since the House passed the articles of impeachment that has strengthened the Democrats’ case.
“I’ll send them over when I’m ready,” she said.
She also criticized the U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani on Friday as provocative and disproportionate.
The House on Thursday passed a resolution that would prevent Trump from taking further action against Iran without congressional approval. Republicans say the resolution has no power to actually dictate the president’s actions. Pelosi said the president’s decision to order the attack that killed Soleimani was “disdainful in terms of not consulting this Congress.”
She also said the attack did not make Americans any safer.“If you want us to all join together, let us have a strategy that we work together on,” Pelosi said. “I do not believe, in terms of what is in the public domain, that they have made the country safer by what they did. And that is what our responsibility is.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif, accused Democrats of backing Soleimani, who is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans, and called the killing justified. He said that Democrats were more loyal to their “socialist base” than they are to curbing Iranian aggression.
“I never thought that there would be a moment in time that the speaker of the House of Representatives would actually be defending Soleimani,” McCarthy said.
