She pleaded for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. to weigh in if the pending vote on additional witnesses ends in a 50-50 deadlock. Then, in an echo of her “impeached for life” declaration earlier this month, Pelosi said the most likely outcome would never be accepted by the public.
“He will not be acquitted. You cannot be acquitted if you don’t have a trial. And you don’t have a trial if you don’t have witnesses and documentation,” Pelosi told reporters.
It’s been an odd few weeks for Pelosi.
From the day she reclaimed the speaker’s gavel a little more than a year ago to the Jan. 15 vote to transmit the impeachment articles to the Senate, Pelosi dominated that debate. For almost nine months, she held off her liberal flank against impeaching the president over Russian interference efforts in the 2016 election.
Then, in late September, Pelosi pivoted once the Trump-Ukraine issue emerged. She took over the impeachment process in a way no speaker ever had before, deputizing her close ally, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), as the lead investigator and dictating that the charges against the president would not go beyond Ukraine matters.
For 28 days after the Dec. 18 impeachment vote, Pelosi held the articles in the House, demanding that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) allow for more witnesses to appear at the trial.
But she has since drifted into the backdrop ever since Schiff led his team of impeachment managers across the Capitol two weeks ago and into the Senate chamber to read the two articles — on abuse of power and obstruction of Congress — and commence trial proceedings.
But Republicans have really focused far more of their legal and political outrage at Schiff and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), searching for any poorly turned phrase to claim outrage.
Partly by design, partly by necessity, Pelosi has taken a background position that allowed the managers to take the lead as she went about the duties of being speaker. Over a 10-day break, Pelosi led a delegation to Poland and Israel for ceremonies commemorating the 75th anniversary of the liberation the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II.
As the managers presented their case last week to the Senate, Pelosi maintained regular contact with Schiff and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). She returned to the Capitol on Monday and convened her first in-person meeting with Schiff and the mangers since the trial started, continuing her behind-the-scenes role in person.
After the meeting, she decided she needed to drill home to the rest of the Democratic caucus that lawmakers keep a dignified tone in their own media appearances, avoiding mishaps that would make the managers’ job even harder during the trial.
“We have to maintain the dignity, the tone and the focus that our managers have brought to it. Our audience is, of course, the American people. But, the challenge is to change the minds of a few senators,” Pelosi said Wednesday, according to a Democrat inside the closed-door caucus meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely describe the comments.
Instead of engaging in the hourly impeachment combat, Pelosi has tried to refocus House Democrats on their policy agenda. On Wednesday, she and several committee chairmen unveiled a $760 billion infrastructure plan — yes, the running-joke issue of the Trump era, always overshadowed by some presidential controversy — and every media question actually focused on highway and bridge funding.
She displayed a chart at her Thursday news conference to highlight the new plan, turning from that to the ongoing talks about legislation to lower prescription drug costs and blasting the administration’s latest proposal on turning Medicaid into a block grant formula to states.
It was one of the most lightly attended news conferences of her second run as speaker, with just two TV cameras on hand. Not a single network TV correspondent was there to pose questions to Pelosi. She poked fun at the absent Chad Pergram, the Fox News congressional correspondent whom she enjoys a cordial relationship with, mocking his love of the Cincinnati Bengals as her hometown San Francisco 49ers head to the Super Bowl.
The big action was across the Capitol, in the run-up to Thursday’s final question-and-answer session in the trial before a pivotal debate and possible vote late Friday on whether to call more witnesses.
Behind the scenes, Pelosi and Schiff are talking about everything from the team’s legal presentations to the type of message that needs to be delivered.
Late Wednesday, Schiff’s answers to senators’ questions began to focus increasingly more on Roberts, fully aware of the potential for him to play a big role as the trial moves on.
So Thursday, Pelosi deflected a question about whether Trump would emerge from a Senate acquittal emboldened and turned it into a chance to latch onto Schiff’s theme the night before. She called on Roberts to break a tie.
“I would think that they would have confidence in the chief justice of the United States, that’s really his title,” she said. “And that’s interesting to me, that they’re afraid of breaking a tie with a chief justice of the United States.”
Still, as the days go forward, Pelosi remains a behind-the-scenes figure after an entire year when the spotlight shined almost singularly on her.
“We did our job. We had a strong case of impeachment of the president of the United States,” Pelosi told reporters Thursday. “No matter what the senators have the courage or not to do, he will be impeached forever.”
