It would be an abuse of power for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to continue to refuse to forward articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump to the Senate, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Thursday.
"She cannot hold onto it forever," the California Republican told Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo. "It is just an acknowledgment from the speaker that their impeachment is so weak. It's the weakest, thinnest, and fastest impeachment in U.S. history."
Pelosi on Wednesday, just minutes after the House voted in a mostly partisan measure to impeach Trump, refused to say when or if she would forward the charges against him to the Senate for a trial. Unless the articles are submitted, the GOP-controlled Senate can't hold the trial, which is most likely to end in Trump's acquittal.
McCarthy said that when dealing with Pelosi, it is not certain how long she'll hold onto the articles, as "she tries to change every rule possible," but he expects she'll have to give in.
"It doesn't matter right now with the holidays," McCarthy said. "They can't take this up until January anyway. I think she is trying to make hay. She does not have a say in the Senate. That's up to the Senate body to decide how they move forward."
Meanwhile, McCarthy claimed that Democrats in the House were showing in "body language you can't see on television" that they knew the impeachment "wasn't going anywhere," but they were still pushing it through because Pelosi was "forcing them."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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