The Impeachment ‘Kill Switch’

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is as of now including in the U.S. Senate impeachment trial rules a “kill switch” that effectively allows for the president’s legal team to seek an immediate verdict or dismissal of the case should Democrats engage in any shenanigans like they did in the House process.

The revelation comes after the House finally late last week formally sent the Articles of Impeachment it adopted before Christmas—after holding them for more than a month without transmission—to the U.S. Senate, thereby triggering the start of a Senate trial. The Senate will formally commence its trial procedures in votes this coming week, and while some Republicans want to outright dismiss the charges altogether from the outset, others believe a trial should take place.

In so finally transmitting the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also named impeachment case managers—the Democrats who will present and manage the House’s case to the Senate—last week. They include House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY). Both Schiff and Nadler were widely panned for the highly unfair process they ran in the House of Representatives, and many Senate Republicans do not trust them to refrain from playing games that seek to make the Senate trial unfair to the president as the highly partisan process in the House ended up.

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