By Robert Romano

Does House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) have a heretofore unnoticed, unconstitutional power to hold up an impeachment that has already been voted on?

That appears to be what she wants the American people to believe. That, articles of impeachment passed by the House, including H. Res. 755 that impeached President Donald Trump, are not actually “passed” unless and until she transmits it to the Senate.

The Speaker of House of Representatives — a constitutional office in Article I of the Constitution — cannot unilaterally defy the will of the House, and prevent legislation from being submitted to the Senate after it has been duly passed by the House.

This is a work of fiction. Nothing in either the Constitution or House or Senate rules grants such power to the Speaker to “sit” on impeachment, thereby would prevent Senate action on such. It exists in the imaginations of liberal law professors.

In fact, House rules are very clear that the Clerk of the House must certify passage of legislation by the House, under Rule II(2)(d)(1): “The Clerk shall…  certify the passage of all bills and joint resolutions.”

Similarly, the Clerk under Rule II(2)(d)2) “shall examine all bills, amendments, and joint resolutions after passage by the House… to see that they are correctly enrolled…”

However, the Articles of Impeachment were neither a bill nor a joint resolution, they were included in a simple resolution, H. Res. 755.

According to Congress.gov, a simple resolution is “[a] matter concerning the rules, the operation, or the opinion of either House alone... Simple resolutions are considered only by the body in which they were introduced. Upon adoption, simple resolutions are attested to by the Clerk of the House of Representatives or the Secretary of the Senate and are published in the Congressional Record.”

Nonetheless, the Clerk of the House did certify the passage of H. Res. 755 when it was posted at clerk.house.gov in the form of roll calls 695 and 696 on Dec. 18.

Which is all the Constitution requires. The Constitution, under Article I, Section 2 states: “The House of Representatives... shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.” By that standard, President Trump is impeached.

Article I, Section 3 states: “The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two-thirds of the Members present. Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States; but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.”

So, very clearly, under the Constitution, the House has sole power to impeach, and the Senate has sole power to try all impeachments. There is nothing in there about transmitting anything to the Senate. All that is required for there to be a trial in the Senate is for the House to have acted to impeach an official, including the President, and, semantics aside, that threshold has clearly been met.

Now, Senate rules on impeachment are a lot more specific about receiving articles of impeachment from the House. Rule I states: “Whensoever  the  Senate  shall  receive  notice  from  the  House  of  Representatives  that  managers  are  appointed  on  their  part  to  conduct  an  impeachment  against  any  person  and  are  directed  to  carry  articles  of  impeachment  to  the  Senate,  the  Secretary  of  the  Senate  shall  immediately  inform the House of Representatives that the Senate is ready to  receive  the  managers  for  the  purpose  of  exhibiting  such  articles of impeachment, agreeably to such notice.”

Rule II outlines the ceremony for the managers to present the articles, which when completed, “the articles shall be exhibited, and then the Presiding Officer of the Senate shall inform the managers that the Senate will take proper order on the subject of the impeachment, of which due notice shall be given to the House of Representatives.”

Pelosi’s theory of “holding” up the Senate trial, if there is one, is that under the aforementioned Senate rules, a Senate trial theoretically cannot begin until it receives this notice from the House. But that is not what the rule says. It says when the Senate receives notice from the House that it has appointed its impeachment managers — the traditional form for presenting the articles to the Senate — then the Senate shall inform the House that is ready to receive them for the purpose of exhibiting the articles and then conduct the ceremony.

But the Senate does not have to play along. Even if the rule precluded a Senate trial without the House naming managers or the ceremony being conducted — it doesn’t, but let’s pretend that it does — the Senate could just override the rule in the same manner it has overridden a 60 vote requirement on reaching cloture on confirming judges and executive branch officers.

Either way, the Senate can sidestep Pelosi’s ploy by simply informing the House that is ready to receive the articles, or the Senate could just declare it is proceeding to consideration of impeachment via the trial and notify the House of such and that it downloaded the articles off of the House’s website. For it to be otherwise would be for the Senate to convey, via its own rules, new powers upon the Speaker to keep the nation under the specter of impeachment for months or even years like a Sword of Damocles, proceeding to a trial a time of her choosing.

Now, this could all be a delaying tactic to forestall a Senate trial until after the New Year, giving members time to enjoy their vacations. Or it could be Pelosi’s intent is to delay the trial indefinitely because the case is too weak and the prospects of conviction too slim. In that case, then the tactic would appear to be to allow more time for the House to amass information that might be beneficial to their side at trial, or more time to apply pressure on weaker Republican Senators.

Suffice to say, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) would be unwise to help create such an awful precedent. He should just proceed to the trial, whether Pelosi is ready or not. The fact is, for better or for worse, the House has already voted to impeach President Trump. What’s done is done. If the case is that weak, then moving for a swift dismissal should be a short order. Let’s get this trial over with.

Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.

---

Congressional spending may be even more insane than impeachment

Dec. 20, 2019, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement responding to the $1.4 trillion omnibus spending package:

"Now that some of the smoke has cleared from impeachment, it cannot be lost that Congress once again failed miserably at showing any kind of fiscal discipline in passing the $1.4 trillion spending bill. It is absurd that in a time of unprecedented prosperity, Congress continues to expand domestic spending. Times of prosperity should be opportunities to cut deficits and restrain the cost of government programs, while still meeting the basic safety net needs of those left behind. The fact that Congress continues a wild spending spree bodes poorly for our nation's ability to afford the real costs of an economic downturn that will eventually happen. The President needs to make fiscal sanity a key component of his 2020 presidential campaign so that in 2021, there will be a political will to significantly cut the exorbitant cost of government. He can start by promoting and defending his own budget, which has in the past provided a pathway to balance with trillions of cuts, when it gets released early next year."

To view online: https://getliberty.org/2019/12/congressional-spending-may-be-even-more-insane-than-impeachment/

---

ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured column from the Chicago Tribune, John Kass blasts news reporters who have not retracted stories containing false allegations that President Donald Trump was a Russian agent that has consumed the public’s attention the past three years:

John Kass: Will Washington media expose the liars who spun the Trump-Russia hoax?

By John Kass

When will the Washington media correct the record and publicly burn their sources in the Obama FBI, the intelligence community and the political class who lied to them for years about that now-discredited Trump-Russia hoax?

That hoax served as pretext for President Barack Obama’s FBI and CIA and others to investigate, and spy upon, the presidential campaign of a rival.

As if by design, the now discredited Trump-Russia story consumed President Donald Trump’s White House and our politics for three years. And from the fetid cauldron of lies and spin grew the wholly partisan Democratic impeachment of the president.

Now, U.S. Attorney John Durham is pursuing a criminal investigation. And the presiding judge of the secret FISA court, which gave the Obama FBI the warrants to investigate and spy on the Trump campaign, is publicly demanding answers.

But when will reporters who carried water for this crew of whisperers admit they’ve been lied to and expose the liars?

Glenn Greenwald of the Intercept and Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone are not conservatives. They are of the left. And they are pushing for answers.

Washington is too fancy for me. I’d get lost in that modern Versailles, a company town of smooth courtiers and Kemalist bureaucrats who protect the state from the people.

But in Chicago, if an anonymous source lies to you, and that leads to bogus reporting, if you’ve been used, you have an obligation to your readers, viewers and your craft.

The Russia hoax caused great damage to the credibility of institutions essential to a functioning republic, including the the FBI, the intelligence services, the presidency, Congress and, yes, even journalism.

Trump is no angel. He’s a transactional man, a dealmaker, a man of questionable ethics and disposition. And if there is any time journalism is required to cover and challenge him, it is now. But after three years of over-the-top cheerleading for “The Resistance,” and soiling itself in the Russia hoax, does the media have any credibility?

Reporters carried water for now discredited former FBI Director James Comey, and for now discredited U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, who served as the Democratic Inspector Javert of the impeachment, and many others.

So, who lied and who told the truth? Who spun political news stories that were believed as fact and became talking points for partisan jabbering?

Some of the more witless pundits mock all this as mere conspiracy theory. Clearly, they do not read Taibbi and Greenwald. And they did not read the Horowitz report. They might have read the early partisan spin, the stuff mushrooms are fed, but they didn’t read the report.

Rosemary Collyer, presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, wants the FBI to come clean about the lies Horowitz found, the lies the FBI told the court that led to search warrants used to spy on Trump and his campaign.

The FISA court is secret, and I don’t like secret courts. But people I respect — people in the FBI and others who revere the Constitution — say FISA is an invaluable tool against foreign spy networks and terrorists who seek to do America harm.

Recently, Judge Collyer issued an order to the FBI to get answers. She called the FBI’s actions — as revealed by Horowitz — to be “antithetical to the heightened duty of candor” that government agents owe the court.

Collyer wrote: “The frequency with which representations made by FBI personnel turned out to be unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession, and with which they withheld information detrimental to their case, calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable.”

Comey and his deputy Andrew McCabe, a TV pundit on CNN, acted as if they didn’t know what happened, and were stunned and dismayed that mistakes were made.

They investigated a presidential campaign, but apparently left all the details to low level staffers and mistakes were made.

As Greenwald wrote in a recent piece in The Intercept, “The revelations of the IG Report are not merely a massive FBI scandal. They are also a massive media scandal, because they reveal that so much of what the U.S. media has authoritatively claimed about all of these matters for more than two years is completely false.”

In Washington, journalists attend formal dinners and literally sing and dance in musical skits to amuse the establishment ruling class.

They give themselves awards — including Pulitzer Prizes for reporting the Russia-Trump story — that have not been, as yet, returned.

Permalink here.

 

---