Pelosi set to send impeachment articles to Senate
US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has said that she is planning to send the articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump over to the Senate next week.
"I have asked Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler [D-N.Y.] to be prepared to bring to the Floor next week a resolution to appoint managers and transmit articles of impeachment to the Senate," Pelosi wrote in a letter to Democrats on Friday.
"I will be consulting with you at our Tuesday House Democratic Caucus meeting on how we proceed further," she added.
The Senate impeachment trial of Trump could begin as early as Wednesday, according to Pelosi.
Last week, Trump claimed he “did not really care” about the trial in the Senate following his impeachment by the House, but he would be happy to have a trial.
“I don’t really care. It doesn’t matter. As far as I’m concerned I’d be very happy with a trial because we did nothing wrong,” Trump told reporters on December 31.
The Republican president reiterated that he considered his impeachment by the Democratic-led House a hoax.
Trump and his Republican allies have attacked the impeachment effort as illegitimate.
In an impeachment probe, the House functions like a prosecutor’s office. If the chamber charges a president with committing impeachable offenses, a group of House members presents evidence of wrongdoing during a trial before the Senate, which acts as a jury in deciding whether the president should be removed from office.
Under the US Constitution, a two-thirds vote of the Senate is required to convict the president.
Trump on December 19 became the third US president to be impeached when the House voted to charge him with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
In their articles of impeachment, Democrats allege that Trump abused his power as president by pressuring Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to help him win re-election.
At the heart of the impeachment case is testimony by current and former officials alleging that Trump pressured Ukraine to announce a corruption investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden, a top contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020.
Democrats also charge Trump with obstructing Congress by preventing members of his administration from cooperating with the impeachment probe, in defiance of the US Constitution.
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