Nancy Pelosi Names Trump Impeachment Managers For Senate Trial

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Wednesday named the lawmakers she has chosen to argue for President Donald Trump ’s removal from office during the upcoming trial in the Senate.

During a news conference on Capitol Hill, she announced her choice of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) as lead impeachment manager. The other six managers all Democrats include House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (N.Y.), House Administration Committee Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren (Calif.), and Reps. Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), Val Demings (Fla.), Jason Crow (Colo.) and Sylvia Garcia (Texas).

The House voted hours later in favor of the managers and to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate. Pelosi is expected to hold a formal engrossment ceremony of the impeachment articles at 5 p.m ET. The managers will then ceremoniously march through the Capitol and deliver the charges to the Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said  that opening arguments in the impeachment trial are likely to begin next Tuesday.

After a monthslong impeachment inquiry, the House voted last month in favor of two articles of impeachment against Trump regarding his dealings with Ukraine: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

Pelosi for weeks had refrained from sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate over concerns that McConnell wouldn’t lead a fair trial.

“Time has been our friend in all of this because it yielded more incriminating evidence, more truth into the public domain,” Pelosi said during the news conference Wednesday, referring in part to new documents related to a campaign by indicted Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas to oust then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.

McConnell backed a resolution earlier this month that would change the Senate’s rules to allow lawmakers to dismiss the articles of impeachment against Trump before the House sends them over. But Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, the No. 4 Republican in the Senate, said Monday that the GOP would not have the votes needed to dismiss the charges.

“If the Senate doesn’t permit the introduction of all relevant witnesses and of all the documents that the House wants to introduce ... then the Senate is engaging in an unconstitutional and disgusting cover-up,” Nadler said at the news conference Wednesday.

“The Senate is on trial as well as the president,” he added.

Most of the managers Pelosi selected are in districts that are safely Democratic, likely shielding them from any election fallout that could come from their involvement in the impeachment trial.

As Pelosi’s news conference wrapped up, Trump posted a tweet lamenting “another Con Job by the Do Nothing Democrats.”

“All of this work was supposed to be done by the House, not the Senate!” he wrote. It’s unclear what “work” the president was specifically referring to in his tweet. 

Sara Boboltz and Igor Bobic contributed reporting.