On the recordJanuary 14, 2020
I point out that, in Article I, Section 2, Clause 5, it says: ``The House of Representatives shall choose their Speaker and other officers; and shall have the sole power of impeachment.'' I would note, also, that in Section 3, when we talk about the Senate: ``Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office,'' et cetera. Clause 6: ``The Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments.'' This is what the Constitution says. This is not unclear. The United States Senate has the power to try impeachments, yet the Speaker of this body has tried to impose her will on the United States Senate. If the Speaker is so interested in what is going on in the Senate, maybe the Speaker should run for the Senate. But what we have today is a body, the House, that acted; and the leader of this body, the Speaker, is refusing to do her duty to transmit the articles to the Senate and has done so despite a lot of rhetoric over the course of the year about the urgency of running impeachment through this body, which now, I think, the vast majority of the American people have seen it for what it was: a political action, a political stunt, to target the President of the United States, to demean the office of the President of the United States, to target him very specifically for political purposes rather than the solemn duty that impeachment is supposed to be reserved for.…
