On Tuesday, Nancy Pelosi flat out refused to hold a full vote on impeachment in the House of Representatives.
After being pressured to hold a vote by Republicans, Pelosi said,
“There’s no requirement that we have a vote. We’re not here to call bluffs. We’re here to find the truth to uphold the Constitution of the United States. This is not a game for us. This is deadly serious.”
There has been a lot of theorizing as to exactly why Pelosi doesn’t want to hold a vote, mainly centering around the unlikelihood of her actually having the votes to go forward with impeachment.
Speculation is that instead of using the formal impeachment process, Democrats want to try a go-around method to try and get Trump impeached through more backdoor methods.
According to Jason Chaffetz of Fox News, there has already been not one, but THREE, votes on impeachment – and ALL have failed miserably.
This is the real reason that Nancy Pelosi is refusing to have another vote, says Chaffetz.
Check it out:
Here's what Chaffetz had to say in his Fox News piece:
Speaker Pelosi isn't refusing to hold a vote on impeachment. She is refusing to hold a fourth vote on impeachment. There have already been three votes. They all failed. Miserably.
In other words, Congress has explicitly voted NOT to pursue impeachment.
In December 2017, January 2018, and again in July 2019 under Pelosi's leadership, the House held votes on whether to open an impeachment inquiry. The results weren't even close.
All three votes came up as "privileged resolutions." Under Congressional rules, members can vote to table the resolution or to proceed. To affirmatively table a privileged resolution kills it, meaning the resolution has failed.
Though the first two impeachment votes came up during the Republican majority, the votes to reject or table them were indisputably bipartisan.
In December 2017 there were 126 Democrats who joined House Republicans to reject Rep. Al Green's impeachment resolution 364-58.
A month later, a new resolution was introduced with similar results: Again, 121 Democrats voted to table. Support for impeachment rose from 58 votes in December to 66 in January. But that was before Democrats won a majority in 2018 and Nancy Pelosi became Speaker.
With Democrats having won dozens of new seats, Rep. Green tried again just three months ago in July 2019. His impeachment resolution was one of four introduced in the 116th Congress. This time even more Democrats voted against an inquiry – 137 up from 121 in the previous Congress.
After this third rejection to pursue impeachment, Rep. Lance Gooden, R-Texas, introduced a resolution to dethrone Chairman Nadler from the House Judiciary Committee for pursuing impeachment proceedings after the House had voted explicitly not to move forward with impeachment.
No wonder why Speaker Pelosi is reluctant to hold a fourth vote. It could fail again.
CBS News has more to say about the details of Pelosi rejecting a House vote on impeachment:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she's not planning to hold a full House vote to formally authorize an impeachment inquiry, following a meeting with House Democrats to discuss the possibility Tuesday night.
"There's no requirement that we have a vote, and so at this time, we will not be having a vote," Pelosi said at a press conference after the meeting. "We're not here to call bluffs."
Republicans have argued that the impeachment inquiry is illegitimate because the full House has not voted to formally begin an investigation. The inquiry is currently being carried out by several committees. The White House counsel has also cited the lack of a full vote as a reason that the White House is not cooperating with the inquiry. A formal House vote is not a step that is required by the Constitution to begin an impeachment inquiry, although previous inquiries have started with such a vote.
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