We told you Nancy Pelosi isn’t playing by Mitch McConnell’s rules

| 8:00 pm EDT October 17, 2019
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Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced a timeline for the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump. Last night Palmer Report pointed out that this was a bunch of nonsense. McConnell gets to decide the speed of the impeachment trial proceedings once they get going, but he gets zero say in when the trial starts. Now Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is spelling it out much more succinctly.

Mitch McConnell tried to convince everyone that because he’s going to hold Senate impeachment trial proceedings six days a week, the whole thing will be over by Christmas. In essence, McConnell was saying to congressional Republicans that he’ll get the whole thing over with for them quickly. But as we pointed out, McConnell doesn’t get to decide when the trial starts.

Nancy Pelosi and the House can take as much or as little time as they want when it comes to their portion of the impeachment process. They’re looking to build the kind of compelling case against Donald Trump that creates so much public pressure for his ouster, Senate Republicans end up having to decide to selfishly throw Trump overboard in order to protect their own personal reelection prospects. To that end, the House will take as long with impeachment as it takes.

That’s why Nancy Pelosi announced today that “I have no idea” how long the House impeachment process will take. It’ll take precisely how long she thinks it needs to take. She’ll decide when to dump the whole thing in Mitch McConnell’s lap, meaning he can’t just magically wrap up the whole thing by any given date.