Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) on Monday introduced a resolution to update Senate rules and dismiss the “bogus impeachment” against President Trump if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi continues to delay in sending impeachment articles to the Senate for a trial.
“Speaker Pelosi started this bogus impeachment by claiming President Trump was an urgent ‘threat to democracy’ who had to be removed now,” Hawley said in a press release. “But after a bipartisan vote against the articles in the House, and with the public opposed to the Democrats’ partisan games, Pelosi has changed her tune.”
“ . . . If Speaker Pelosi is afraid to try her case, the articles should be dismissed for failure to prosecute and Congress should get back to doing the people’s business,” he added.
Hawley, who last month called the impeachment process a “kangaroo court” and said “it’s time to get the president exonerated,” was joined by ten other Republican senators in sponsoring the resolution, which allows the Senate to vote on dismissing articles of impeachment if they are delayed for 25 days or more by the House.
“Nancy Pelosi is attempting to obstruct a Senate trial, that’s all there is to it,” Hawley told Fox & Friends Monday morning. “ . . . In this instance, the Senate is the court, and it’s time for us to take action and say, ‘if you’re not going to prosecute your case, we’re going to throw it out.”
It’s time to challenge Nancy Pelosi’s assault on the Constitution. Today I’m introducing a change to the Senate rules to force Pelosi & the Dems to send the Senate the impeachment articles for trial – or have them dismissed pic.twitter.com/hbSRmNuWIa
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) January 6, 2020
The Republican majority in the Senate has proposed several different solutions to the current stalemate over an impeachment trial. On Sunday, Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) said the Senate could “take matters in our own hands” to change the rules to “start the trial without” Pelosi sending the articles.
Last month, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell accused Democrats of cowardice for failing to hand over the articles, but said later that the Senate “can’t do anything until the speaker sends the papers over.”
Neither McConnell nor Graham initially cosponsored Hawley’s resolution.