House Speaker Nancy Pelosi vowed Thursday to push ahead quickly with the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump over his role in inciting the violent storming of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.
A day after President Joe Biden took office, Pelosi left little doubt that she plans to quickly transmit the articles of impeachment to the Senate, a move that will trigger a trial of Trump.
“It will be soon and I don’t think it will be long,” said Pelosi, D-Calif. “And it must be done.”
Pelosi repeatedly refused to give a timetable for the impeachment trial, which is a delicate subject given Biden’s hopes to move quickly on fighting the coronavirus pandemic and turn around the anemic economy.
“There’s no use asking. I’m not going to be telling you when it is going,” she said.
Pelosi pushed back emphatically against the idea that Americans should let Trump off the hook for his role in inciting the riot because he has left office.
She described that as being akin to handing a president a “get out of jail free card” for misdeeds done in the final weeks in the White House.
“The fact is, POTUS committed an act of incitement of insurrection,” Pelosi said. “I don’t think it’s very unifying to say: ‘Let’s just forget it and move on.’”
The top House Democrat said she believes there is a huge difference between this impeachment trial and the first one, which focused on Trump’s effort to bully the president of Ukraine into digging up dirt on Biden.
“The whole world bore witness to the president’s incitement,” she said.
