Radio Recap – Breaking: Pelosi Announces Wednesday Vote on Delivery of Impeachment Articles

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced a Wednesday vote – that’s tomorrow – to name the house managers and send the articles of impeachment over to the U.S. Senate, beginning the trial.

On today’s Jay Sekulow Live we discussed Wednesday’s impending vote that will send the impeachment process over to the U.S. Senate for the trial.

It looks like by tonight or tomorrow, we will know exactly when the U.S. Senate will begin its proceedings. It appears, based off the reporting, that Speaker Nancy Pelosi has told the House Democrats that the vote on the resolution to both name the House impeachment managers and transmit the articles of impeachment over to the U.S. Senate will occur sometime tomorrow, Wednesday, in the House of Representatives.

The timing of that vote is key because it affects the timing of what happens in the U.S. Senate. After the articles are sent over to the Senate, the President’s legal team, which I am part of in my capacity as one of his outside counsel, will have a period of time to file an answer to those articles. The impeachment managers representing the House of Representatives then will have a set time to file their response. That would be before they proceeded to the rules being voted on and the amendment process as well.

That’s the first time you’d see both the House managers representing the side in favor of impeachment and the President’s legal team on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

When they start trying to amend the rules, the members don’t get to debate that, the legal teams do. Each side gets an hour per each proposed amendment to the rules. That’s the first day of where you’d see action by people like my father, Jay Sekulow (functioning in his capacity as Outside Counsel to President Trump), White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, and whomever the House managers are going to be. We’ll find out who those managers are going to be very soon, perhaps tonight, or by tomorrow.

One thing to note is that one of the most important, if not the most important parts of beginning a trial is to set the rules of the game.

ACLJ Director of Government Affairs Thann Bennett made the following point:

I think it’s the pivot point in the trial. Look, it might be when the Senate starts ceasing to look like the Senate that people know. Over the course of the next couple of days you’re going to see some of the procedural stuff that people are used to seeing. After the House votes, the Senate has to actually vote on a resolution that says hey, we’re ready to receive the articles before the House actually sends them over. That part of the process is going to look somewhat similar to what people are used to seeing in the United States Senate.

Thann continued:

When they get to this point on the rules and they have to start debating what rules are going to govern the procedures, even if it looks almost identical to what it looked like twenty years ago, I think that’s the point where people will be surprised at how it looks. . . . [T]hat’s the point where you’re going to start seeing some of the Senators start to say, what are we doing here?

They know they have a weak case. I don’t think most wanted to be here.

You can listen to the entire episode with our team’s full analysis here.