The House Judiciary Committee voted strictly along party lines to have the full House decide whether President Donald Trump should impeached.

Jayapal told KUOW Morning Edition host Angela King why the committee delayed a vote from late Thursday night.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal: The Republicans introduced seven amendments, two of which were actually germane to what we were discussing. The other five were absolutely absurd, and they tried to use the time to drag the discussion out into the night.

Now, I know it's not the night out on the West Coast, but it's the night for half of the country, so that they could say that we took the vote in the dark of night, in the middle of night we voted to impeach the president.

We were not going to let that happen. So once they had made it to 11 o'clock at night, they were pushing to have us take a vote when most of the country is asleep on the impeachment of a president, something so grave that this is only the third time that we will be voting on an impeachment.

That was untenable. We had to take our vote in the light of day when the American people could see and understand what was happening and follow it and see how this turned out.

Angela King: What do you think of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's comments that they're going to be working with the president when the proceedings move to the Senate, as they are expected to do?

Jayapal: I think it was such an affront to what the framers intended in the Constitution when they talked about a trial in the Senate.

It would be like if somebody committed a crime against you, and that person went to court as a defendant and then the foreman of the jury, and in fact in this case the person who also makes all of the rules of the trial, says 'I'm going to be coordinating with the defendant. We're going to do everything in coordination so that we deliver the result that that the defendant wants and there's no chance that he's going to be convicted. He is gonna get off.'

And that foreman of the jury announces that at the very beginning. I think every American should be outraged at the idea that this is happening and they should call their U.S. senator and demand a fair trial with a fair process and witnesses and no coordination between the Senate and the White House.