--- title: Democrats Hit Pause on Moving Trump's Impeachment to Senate description: After the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Donald Trump, the immediate fate of the Democrats' case remained unclear canonical: https://time.com/5752943/democrats-impeachment-senate/ author: Philip Elliott article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2019-12-19T18:48:55.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:52:25.651Z article:section: Politics og:title: Democrats Hit Pause on Moving Trump's Impeachment to Senate og:description: After the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Donald Trump, the immediate fate of the Democrats' case remained unclear og:url: https://time.com/5752943/democrats-impeachment-senate/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc0af98c050a3cc01/698a07c6b3fce399fe0c60a3/pelosi-impeachment-senate.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: House Speaker Pelosi Holds News Conference Following Vote On Impeachment Of President Trump og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Democrats Hit Pause on Moving Trump's Impeachment to Senate twitter:description: After the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Donald Trump, the immediate fate of the Democrats' case remained unclear twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc0af98c050a3cc01/698a07c6b3fce399fe0c60a3/pelosi-impeachment-senate.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Democrats Hit Pause on Moving Impeachment to Senate, Citing Concerns Over Fair Trial > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, twice a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=260c5c6e-7495-4aaf-81be-21439143cd3f&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Mitch McConnell Reacts to Trump's Impeachment [Watch (HLS stream): Mitch McConnell Reacts to Trump's Impeachment](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/ilfxHMYi.m3u8) (1:28)  _Published 2019-12-19. Mitch McConnell Reacts to Trump's Impeachment_  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Dec 19, 2019 6:48 PM UTC  U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from California, center, speaks during a news conference after the House voted on articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 18, 2019. U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from California, center, speaks during a news conference after the House voted on articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 18, 2019. Andrew Harrer—Bloomberg/Getty Images  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Dec 19, 2019 6:48 PM UTC Less than a day after the House of Representatives [voted to impeach President Donald Trump](https://time.com/5751699/donald-trump-impeached/), making him the third President to be impeached in U.S. history, the immediate fate of the Democrats’ case against the President remained unclear. Moments after the vote on Wednesday night, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made a stunning declaration, saying she would withhold passing a resolution in the House advancing the articles of impeachment, which charge the President with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, to the Senate until she was assured the upper body would give it a fair trial. Pelosi’s comments came in response to growing concerns among Democrats that Senate Majority Leader McConnell, who leads Republicans in the upper house, is planning to scuttle any serious review of the charges and speed to a quick acquittal, as he suggested in a Fox news interview. Democrats have requested that fresh testimony and evidence be considered in the trial, but McConnell has been clear he doesn’t plan to compromise to his Democratic colleagues. “This is a political process. There’s not anything judicial about it,” McConnell told reporters waiting outside his Dec. 17 lunch with fellow Republicans. “The House made a partisan political decision to impeach. I would anticipate we will have a largely partisan outcome in the Senate. I’m not impartial about this at all.” If Pelosi holds onto the impeachment articles, she holds the specter of illegitimacy over Trump’s head, keeping a game of partisan brinksmanship in play that is without precedent in the Capitol. By effectively freezing up the process, she may send the whole of government into a stasis that could last through November’s elections. In Pelosi’s mind, the onus is now on McConnell to convince her it’s worth shipping the House efforts across Capitol Hill. She has also boxed McConnell in, giving him an out on conducting a trial he has repeatedly said he doesn’t want to happen and driving a wedge between him and Trump, who welcomes a trial in the Senate, where the [Republican majority will almost certainly vote against](https://time.com/5751643/republicans-unified-donald-trump-impeachment/) removing him from office. But McConnell is as shrewd a tactician as Capitol Hill has ever seen. By the time he spoke from the Senate floor on Thursday morning to respond to Pelosi’s threat, it was clear he understood that the stakes had been raised, and said the Senate was built to stand as a check on the House’s passions. “It is clear what this moment requires,” he said in a long, history-laced speech. “The framers built the Senate to provide stability, to take the long view of our republic… To safeguard institutions from the momentary hysteria that sometimes consumes our politics. To keep partisan politics from literally boiling over. The Senate exists for moments like this.” His Democratic counterpart, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, built on McConnell’s historic framing of the moment to rally his side of the aisle and give Pelosi’s concerns some buttress on the north side of the Capitol. “Here, I agree with Senator McConnell,” he said on the Senate floor. “Moments like this are why the Senate exists. If the President commits high crimes and misdemeanors, and the Congress can do nothing about it, not even conduct a fair tribunal where his conduct is judged by dispassionate representatives of the people, then the President can commit those crimes with impunity.” House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, the third-highest ranking Democrat in the House and a strong Pelosi ally, backed Pelosi on Thursday, saying the delay in handing the articles to the Senate was “necessary” because McConnell had been clear that he would not be “impartial” or “fair.” “Until we can get some assurances from the Majority Leader that he is going to allow for a fair, and impartial trial to take place, we would be crazy to walk in there knowing he’s set up a kangaroo court,” Clyburn told CNN, adding he would be willing to wait “as long as it takes.” On Capitol Hill, Pelosi continued to build pressure on McConnell to work with Schumer on an agreement she would approve. In a year-end press conference with reporters, Pelosi said the founders “never expected there would be a rogue President and a rogue Leader at the same time.” Pelosi recognizes she alone cannot convince McConnell to demand that Administration officials to testify or turn over documents, as Schumer has requested. But the White House might be able to force McConnell’s hand to take seriously the politics of this historic moment. White House aides have made very clear to Senators that they need a trial so that Trump can say he was impeached, but ultimately found not guilty. Having a President running for re-election with a pending impeachment may sow politically damaging doubts among voters. And Senators are also mindful of their own re-election bids. If Pelosi keeps impeachment looming, that could render the entire 2020 Senate map into a single-issue battlefield, effectively making the election a referendum on whether voters in places like Arizona, Maine, North Carolina, Iowa and Colorado agree with [Trump’s conditioning of foreign aid to Ukraine on an investigation into his domestic political riva](https://time.com/guardians-of-the-year-2019-public-servants/)l. McConnell, who is running for re-election next year in a state that just elected a Democratic Governor, does not want that. _With reporting by Alana Abramson/Washington and Sanya Mansoor/New York_ ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5752943/democrats-impeachment-senate/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5752943/democrats-impeachment-senate/"},"headline":"Democrats Hit Pause on Moving Impeachment to Senate, Citing Concerns Over Fair Trial","datePublished":"2019-12-19T18:48:55.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:52:25.651Z","description":"Less than a day after the House voted to impeach President Trump, Nancy Pelosi made a stunning declaration, saying she would withhold passing a resolution to advance the articles of impeachment until she was assured the Senate would give it a fair trial","url":"https://time.com/5752943/democrats-impeachment-senate/","keywords":["Impeachment"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc0af98c050a3cc01/698a07c6b3fce399fe0c60a3/pelosi-impeachment-senate.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Philip Elliott","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc0af98c050a3cc01/698a07c6b3fce399fe0c60a3/pelosi-impeachment-senate.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"House Speaker Pelosi Holds News Conference Following Vote On Impeachment Of President Trump","caption":"House Speaker Pelosi Holds News Conference Following Vote On Impeachment Of President Trump","creditText":"Andrew Harrer—Bloomberg/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/impeachment/","name":"Impeachment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/5752943/democrats-impeachment-senate/","name":"Democrats Hit Pause on Moving Impeachment to Senate, Citing Concerns Over Fair Trial"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Democrats Have Impeached Trump in the House. 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