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<\/p>\nRUSH: Chicago. Steve, great to have you with us, sir. Hello.<\/p>\n
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Just a quick question. Is it possible for Nancy Pelosi to withhold articles of impeachment from the Senate until after the 2020 election, wait for a possible Democratic win, then submit?<\/p>\n
RUSH: I\u2019ll be honest with you, I don\u2019t know. This is uncharted territory for a lot of people. The idea of holding these articles until after 2020 — you\u2019re presuming Trump\u2019s reelected?<\/p>\n
CALLER: Yes. Of course. Yeah.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
RUSH: My off-the-cuff answer to this is gonna be that unless specified, like legislation, an act of Congress ends when that Congress ends, and Congresses have two-year life spans because that\u2019s the term of House of Representatives terms. In the Senate it\u2019s six. There\u2019s one more year to go for this current Congress, which was sworn in this January, January 2019.<\/p>\n
CALLER: Hm-hm.<\/p>\n
RUSH: I don\u2019t think it would work that way. But it\u2019s kind of academic because they\u2019re not gonna stop. I fully expect them to add to these articles.<\/p>\n
CALLER: Yes. That would give them time to add also.<\/p>\n
RUSH: I think that\u2019s gonna be the name of the game. As long as Pelosi is convinced that there will not be a conviction, she\u2019s never gonna permit a trial. Now, there\u2019s another thing that she\u2019s attempting here. I should have mentioned this at the top. She is attempting, along with Chuck You Schumer, to engineer a Senate trial that actually is an investigation of additional charges.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why they want four witnesses called. That\u2019s when McConnell shut that down yesterday. Said, look, we judge the case. The House makes the case. The House is the prosecutor. They do the indictment, articles of impeachment, deliver to us, and we act as the jury and the chief justice is the judge and we go from there. We do not conduct investigations. We do not, as the jury, add to whatever is presented to us.<\/p>\n
But they\u2019re gonna try to force that under this rubric of fairness. And they have experience succeeding with this. Accusing the Republicans of being unfair in the past has worked. It worked in the Kavanaugh thing, for example. They let Blasey Ford come forth at the last moment and gum up all the works. They\u2019re gonna try something like that here too.<\/p>\n
BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n
RUSH: Okay. Here\u2019s Joel Pollak\u2019s piece in Breitbart: “Senate Can Acquit Even If House Withholds Articles of Impeachment.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Impeachment is a two-pronged process. And he has been impeached. They voted articles of impeachment in the House of Representatives. They created an indictment with two charges. So he\u2019s been impeached. If there is nothing further that happens, if there\u2019s no trial, if there\u2019s no verdict, he\u2019s still been impeached. (interruption) No, impeachment is not inclusive of a trial. He has been impeached. No matter what happens from this day forward, he has been impeached.<\/p>\n Bill Clinton was impeached and acquitted. Found guilty of lying. Trump will be impeached and maybe no decision, which is what Trump doesn\u2019t want. But, no, nothing erases the fact that he\u2019s been impeached. The problem, the reason people are asking this is \u2019cause a lot of people think impeachment means guilty. It doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n Impeachment is not a statement of innocence or guilt. It simply says the president has been judged, by the House in this case, which is rabidly partisan, to have engaged in constitutional high crimes and misdemeanors.<\/p>\n There\u2019s Lisa Page on TV. You know, this is class. Classic, classic, classic. Lisa Page, who\u2019s going back and forth with her texts with Strzok and just ridiculing Trump and plotting Trump\u2019s demise, putting together a plan whereby she and her buddies at the FBI can get rid of the guy, can falsely charge him, falsely accuse him.<\/p>\n And then it\u2019s all revealed that she\u2019s been engaged in these texts back and forth with Strzok. It\u2019s been revealed that she was a lousy FBI agent and lawyer. It\u2019s been revealed that she was part of a process trying to rig the outcome of this investigation. And it was revealed she was having an affair with Strzok.<\/p>\n So what does Trump do? At Trump rallies, he simulates Strzok and Page having a very wonderful, romantic interlude. And she loses it. She loses it. She thinks it\u2019s outrageous, it was the last straw, that\u2019s why she had to go public, when Trump started making fun of her orgasms. So you see, these people can dish it out, and they can do whatever they want to do to literally destroy people. But you make fun of them, and they haven\u2019t the guts — these people couldn\u2019t take one one-hundredth of what they dish out to Donald Trump.<\/p>\n They\u2019re nothing but a bunch of, when you get right down to it, wimps who live in little protective cocoons that they have built for themselves where they\u2019re able to tell each other how important they are, how wonderful they are, how great they are, and therefore they get to create the illusion of their wonderful life. Somebody like Trump comes along and blows it up, and they can\u2019t deal with it. It happens all the time.<\/p>\n Now, here\u2019s Joel Pollak\u2019s piece. “Senate Can Acquit Even If House Withholds Articles of Impeachment.\u201d That\u2019s because the Constitution, says Joel Pollak here, is absolutely clear about the Senate\u2019s authority. Article I, Section 3, says the Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachment. That is all it says. It doesn\u2019t say that the Senate will. It doesn\u2019t say that the Senate has to. It doesn\u2019t say that the Senate must conduct a trial. It says the Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Chief Justice presides over a trial involving the president, but the Senate makes the rules. And the Senate is controlled by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who regards what the House has done with contempt. Politico outlined Democrats\u2019 new idea,\u201d citing the so-called constitutional authority Laurence Tribe, who\u2019s a Harvard Law professor. They don\u2019t cite the Constitution. No, no, no. In outlining the Democrats\u2019 idea, they go to a Harvard Law professor who is himself a rabid, sick, partisan Trump hater.<\/p>\n \u201cPelosi hopes to pressure McConnell into holding a \u2018fair trial\u2019 \u2014 this, after she and her party broke every relevant House rule and precedent, and several Amendments in the Bill of Rights, all in the name of their \u2018sole Power of Impeachment.\u2019 They forget that a \u2018fair trial\u2019 applies to the accused, not the accuser, and has since 1215.\u201d Magna Carta. The right to a fair trial is solely about the accused.<\/p>\n \u201cIf Pelosi refuses to submit the articles of impeachment to the Senate, McConnell can convene the Senate anyway, summon the Chief Justice, and swear in the Senators as jurors.\u201d And he can dismiss the case. And that\u2019s what the hell ought to happen. And it ought to happen before Christmas. It ought to happen by the end of this week, dismiss this, because McConnell has the full authority and power to do it.<\/p>\n BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n Oh! Let me reiterate something here. I had to hurry that in to get it in before the program\u2019s previous hour ended. The way this can end even with no articles of impeachment sent over to the Senate is very simple. Mitch McConnell runs the Senate. The Senate has sole power to conduct a trial. Pelosi has nothing to say about it.<\/p>\n She can whine and moan and complain about a fair trial, and Schumer can run around and say, “All we want is a fair trial.” It\u2019s the accused who gets a fair trial. Not the prosecutors. It\u2019s the accused. In American jurisprudence, the whole concept of a fair trial is the concept applied to the accused. And once again, it\u2019s the Democrats\u2019 bastardizing the American constitutional process and the rule of law and trying to make everything all about them.<\/p>\n But the way that McConnell can dispense with this without the articles of impeachment ever being sent over, is the chief justice is the judge. So McConnell calls him in, gavels the Senate (i.e., the jury) into order. Look at him as the foreman of the jury, if you will. He swears in the chief justice, and then dismisses the case. He takes a vote on dismissing the case, dismissing the charges — summary judgment, however you want to look at it — and does so, and it\u2019s over.<\/p>\n If he gets 51 votes to dismiss the case, it\u2019s over with, and no articles of impeachment will have been presented. Everybody\u2019s seen them. Everybody knows what they are. If Pelosi refuses to send the charges over, why, the jury, the judge, the Senate can go ahead and say, “Okay, fine. We\u2019re gonna dismiss this. We\u2019ll throw it out \u2019cause you got nothing anyway.” Now, while that would be delicious, we can all probably conceive of the reasons the Turtle wouldn\u2019t do it.<\/p>\n If you allow them any control of the process, then you\u2019re gonna get any number of Christine Blasey Ford types thrown into all of this after the fact with their demand for new witnesses, their demand for further investigation. That simply does not have to happen. They do not get that. They can demand it; they can cry all they want about it; but they get nothing. The Senate has the sole power to conduct a trial.<\/p>\n And dismissing the charges is a far more preferable outcome than a never-ending trial, \u2019cause I\u2019m gonna tell you like I told you yesterday: If a trial ever does begin, it\u2019s gonna become a yearlong circus, and it will be used as a campaign aid for which it will be costing the Democrats no money. It will all be televised, and it will be nothing more than the primary impetus for the 2020 campaign to not elect Trump and to elect whoever the Democrats nominate.<\/p>\n That will be its purpose. Now, Pelosi — again to reiterate — is not gonna send those articles over there unless she can be assured by somebody that she\u2019s gonna get a conviction. She\u2019s not gonna do it. That would undercut everything. An acquittal would undercut the entire premise of everything they\u2019re doing. The last thing they… This is the thing about it, again, that has never made sense to a lot of people. It\u2019s made perfect sense to me. All these analysts on TV have been asking, “Why — why — why even do this if the end result is gonna be he gets acquitted?”<\/p>\n And the answer has been, “All she wants is the blemish. All she wants is to be able to say Trump\u2019s been impeached.” No, that\u2019s not all she wants. They want Trump gone, folks. They want the 2016 election overturned. They want the precedent of being able to say they did it once. They want to be able to overturn the election results. If they can do it this time, they can do it any time in the future they want — and that\u2019s McConnell\u2019s point in allowing this to go forward as it sits now.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no reason for it to go forward if she\u2019s not gonna send the articles over because she doesn\u2019t want an acquittal. So that\u2019s why she\u2019s not sending over articles, not any other reason. That\u2019s it. She knows the articles don\u2019t have any substance. She knows the charges are entirely bogus. There\u2019s not a crime specified. There\u2019s not an impeachable offense specified. It\u2019s nothing but a bunch of opinions from scholars and so forth.<\/p>\n There\u2019s nothing in this that is substantive in any way, shape, manner, or form.<\/p>\n It\u2019s all happened before; so she\u2019s not gonna send this over there, these articles.<\/p>\n BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n RUSH: There are a couple of blog posts here I want to share with you on the impeachment before we get to the Democrat debate. The Federalist has a piece here by Christopher Bedford, \u201cWhy Impeachment Is A Massive Blunder For Nancy Pelosi.\u201d<\/a> In a political sense. Let me share with you a couple of pull quotes from this piece.<\/p>\n “Understand that to the political press corps, a GOP that unanimously backed the president and opposed Pelosi is ‘at times irrational,\u2019 and three Democrats voting against their speaker and one defecting from the entire party is ‘almost uniformly\u2019 in line. This ‘conventional wisdom\u2019 is accepted by nearly the entire corporate media, and parroted to Americans forced to listen at airports and gyms across the country.<\/p>\n “Amazingly, though, it is not nearly the greatest media distortion of even the day. For example, it is far surpassed by the worship, adoration and glorification of Madam Speaker, the Democrats\u2019 leader in the fight. ‘Her command of legislation, her control over her caucus, her ability to confront a historically hostile president and GOP-run Senate on equal terms are unparalleled,'” they write about her.<\/p>\n \u201cJust before the impeachment vote, while not agreeing to the number the White House asked for, Congress sent another $1.4 billion to build the president\u2019s wall. The day after impeachment, Pelosi appears ready to pass the president\u2019s trade deal. And since impeachment began, the president\u2019s party gained more than 600,000 new donors and raised more than $10 million.\u201d<\/p>\n The point of all of these assertions is that every bit of this is going against Nancy Pelosi in real political terms — polling, fundraising, popularity. And he\u2019s exactly right. Mr. Bedford here is exactly right. They\u2019re digging a grave. They have been digging this grave since they undertook this. And they just keep digging.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/APP-BREITBART-TEARAWAY-121919.jpg\")
<\/a>Now, a lot of people have asked me that if Pelosi refuses to send the articles to the Senate, is there really any impeachment? Yes. She doesn\u2019t have to send the articles for Trump to remain impeached forever.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/APP-040618-Rush-Constitution.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/APP-121919-IMPEACHMENT-Pelosi-2.jpg\")
The media would have a cow. The media would start bleating like we haven\u2019t heard them bleat — and, of course, Pelosi and Schumer would start bleating, “It\u2019s not fair! It\u2019s an unfair process. It\u2019s what we told you: A partisan process!” It would be entirely constitutional. It would be entirely legal. However, there is the political aspect to consider. But I think the end result of this is what matters, not the process.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/APP-FEDERALIST-TEARAWAY-121919.jpg\")
<\/a>“There\u2019s a willful suspension of belief at work in the capital city. Self-proclaimed defenders of the Constitution make excuses for sloppy spying on a major candidate for president. Men who compare themselves to those at Valley Forge shift seamlessly from allegations of urine-soaked escapades to collusion with the Kremlin, from the Kremlin to Ukraine, and finally from quid-quo-pro to bribery to obstruction, with stopovers on NFL anthem protests and insults to ‘The Squad.\u2019 The speaker quotes the deceased Elijah Cummings in wondering, ‘When we\u2019re dancing with the angels, the question will be asked, in 2019,\u2019 did we impeach Donald Trump?<\/p>\n
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<\/a>\u201cDemocrats also can\u2019t be unaware that impeaching Trump on these grounds won\u2019t do anything to help their chances in 2020. If anything, it might make it harder for them to win the election, since it bolsters Trump\u2019s case that the Deep State will do anything to kick him out of office.<\/p>\n