During a Tuesday appearance on “CNN Newsroom,” Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) defended House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) decision to withhold the articles of impeachment from the Senate.

Holmes Norton said there is “no urgency” to send over the articles, adding she thinks it will be “ironed out” by the beginning of the new year.

“[Pelosi] is really not holding out,” Holmes Norton argued. “Let me tell you why: we’ve got to assign our own folks to go and argue the case, argue the case from the point of view of the House of Representatives. She has made no indication that she’s not going to send the articles over. Remember, Congress is gone for two weeks. There’s no urgency. Where do we send them to, an empty Senate chamber? I would predict that by the beginning of the year, this will be ironed out.”

She continued, “The House does not want to be engrossed in impeachment this year. We passed 400 bills. … The Senate has even looked at 70 of them and they weren’t even the most important ones. Remember, we got the House back because of health care. We’ve got prescription drug prices over there. So Nancy Pelosi has no reason to want to drag this out. And as soon as we know what Schumer’s ongoing negotiations with McConnell will yield, we’ve got to decide how long the impeachment goes, whether there will be witnesses and the like. Then she will know who to appoint to go over to the Senate to argue the case for the House of Representatives. That’s all that is. There’s no delay whatsoever because there’s nothing happening in the House and Senate because of Christmas.”

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