A legal analyst for CNN criticized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s strategy to try to force a Senate impeachment trial on her terms by withholding two articles against President Trump from the upper chamber.
“I think she’s grasping here,” Paul Callan told CNN Newsroom on Monday after he was asked about Pelosi’s move.
“The Republicans hold all the cards in the Senate. The trial of an impeachment is solely within the discretion of the Senate,” he added.
“All the prior impeachments have involved the majority of the Senate at the time of determining what the rules would be, and of course, the Republicans are in the majority now,” Callan added.
Continuing, he said, “So the only thing she can do is try to threaten to withhold the documents that are necessary for the trial in order to get a fairer trial.
“But I think we’re coming to the end of the road on that, and the impeachment articles will have to be formally submitted,” he predicted.
Callan, a British journalist and editor, noted that he believes a Senate trial could move forward even without receiving the articles from the House.
“Frankly, I think they could be tried even if they weren’t formally submitted. They’re a matter of public record. We know exactly what was voted,” he said.
“But we’ll see how this plays out. And in the end, Mitch McConnell gets to call the shots, just as Pelosi called the shots on the House side,” said Callan.
“That’s because in the end, this is a political process. It’s not a court of law. It’s a political process, and it’s controlled entirely now by the Republicans.”