‘What this president did is worse than anything that any president has done…’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., threatened Senate Republicans about blocking Democrats’ requests for additional witness testimony and refusing to hold President Trump accountable for his “transgression” during his upcoming impeachment trial.
“What is going to happen is the Senate is going to incriminate itself if it says ‘we don’t want to see witnesses, we’re going to ignore the truth,’” Pelosi said during a fundraiser in San Francisco last week.
Even if Republicans stonewall the Democrats’ requests, Democrats have still won an important battle, she claimed.
“Whatever they do, and however they try to run and hide from the truth, as I have said to the president—you are impeached forever,” Pelosi said, according to NBC News.
Although many Republicans have warned that the Democrats’ impeachment efforts will backfire among independent voters in the swing states, Pelosi claimed that public opinion is on her side.
“Over 70% of the American people have said that they want witnesses, and I think that is the leverage that the Democratic senators have, and hopefully some of the Republican senators as well,” she said.
It remained unclear whether Pelosi also supported the possibility of President Donald Trump’s defense attorneys calling to the stand witnesses like presumed whistleblower Eric Ciaramella, as well as former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
Central to Trump’s defense will likely be that the corruption implicating the Bidens and their pay-to-play influence-peddling with the Burisma gas company justified calling on Ukraine to reopen its investigations into them, which had been suspended under duress during the Obama administration.
Pelosi encouraged Democrats to continued their attacks on Trump, regardless of what his defense may reveal.
“What this president did is worse than anything that any president has done,” she alleged, implicitly downplaying historical wrongs such as slavery and the exploitation of American Indians.
“We have to make sure that no president—no matter who he or she may be—can think they can get away with this,” Pelosi continued.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made it clear that the Senate will conduct the impeachment trial quickly and efficiently, pointing out that the Republican majority will almost certainly vote to acquit Trump.
But Pelosi countered that no matter what McConnell does, Trump is “never going to be exonerated.”
McConnell blasted Pelosi last week for turning impeachment into a “sham” and treating it like a celebration.
“She signed the impeachment papers. And that took place at a table with a political slogan stuck on it. And they posed afterwards, for smiling photos, and the Speaker distributed souvenir pens to her own colleagues emblazoned with her golden signature that literally came in on silver platters. Golden pens on silver platters. A souvenir, to celebrate the moment,” McConnell said on the Senate floor.
“Now, I seem to remember Democrats falling over themselves to say they did not see impeachment as a long sought political win,” McConnell continued. “They recognized the gravity and seriousness of this action, and of course, they had only come to it reluctantly. Of course, nothing says seriousness and sobriety like handing out souvenirs.”