Noah Feldman, the Harvard law professor who you may remember from the phony impeachment hearing that Nadler held two weeks ago, has written an article claiming that unless Pelosi sends the articles of impeachment to the Senate, Trump is not yet impeached:
Trump isn't impeached til House transmits to Senate, per a Harvard Law professor who was a witness for House Democrats.
“If the articles are not transmitted, Trump could legitimately say that he wasn’t truly impeached at all,“ @NoahRFeldman writes. https://t.co/urzhneXlo8
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) December 19, 2019
Here’s more:
BLOOMBERG – Now that the House of Representatives has voted to impeach President Donald Trump, what is the constitutional status of the two articles of impeachment? Must they be transmitted to the Senate to trigger a trial, or could they be held back by the House until the Senate decides what the trial will look like, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi has hinted?
The Constitution doesn’t say how fast the articles must go to the Senate. Some modest delay is not inconsistent with the Constitution, or how both chambers usually work.
But an indefinite delay would pose a serious problem. Impeachment as contemplated by the Constitution does not consist merely of the vote by the House, but of the process of sending the articles to the Senate for trial. Both parts are necessary to make an impeachment under the Constitution: The House must actually send the articles and send managers to the Senate to prosecute the impeachment. And the Senate must actually hold a trial.
If the House does not communicate its impeachment to the Senate, it hasn’t actually impeached the president. If the articles are not transmitted, Trump could legitimately say that he wasn’t truly impeached at all.
That’s because “impeachment” under the Constitution means the House sending its approved articles of to the Senate, with House managers standing up in the Senate and saying the president is impeached.
Note, he says the “House must actually send the articles and send managers to the Senate to prosecute the impeachment. And the Senate must actually hold a trial.” Well ain’t that something.
If this is true, that’s even more incentive for McConnell to declare impeachment null and void before Nancy sends the articles over, as Levin suggested this morning. Because that means all that the House did with their phony impeachment trials and impeachment articles will have been for NOTHING.
The White House is doing their own analysis of this today so we’ll probably be hearing more about soon. But for now, it sounds like Trump can declare he’s not impeached!