One of the legal scholars who testified in the impeachment proceedings believes that President Trump could argue he has not been impeached until the House sends the articles to the Senate.

Noah Feldman, a professor at Harvard Law School, published an opinion piece in Bloomberg on Thursday arguing against the House Democrats withholding the articles of impeachment, thus preventing the Senate from holding a trial.

"Both parts are necessary to make an impeachment under the Constitution: The House must actually send the articles and send managers to the Senate to prosecute the impeachment. And the Senate must actually hold a trial," he argues. "If the House does not communicate its impeachment to the Senate, it hasn’t actually impeached the president. If the articles are not transmitted, Trump could legitimately say that he wasn’t truly impeached at all."

Feldman, who believes the president has committed impeachable offenses, also points out the House refusing to "ever" send the articles of impeachment to the Senate "would also deviate from the constitutional protocol" and added, "It would mean that the president had not genuinely been impeached under the Constitution; and it would also deny the president the chance to defend himself in the Senate that the Constitution provides."

He also notes that while the Constitution does not reference a specific time frame in which the House must send the articles to the Senate, not sending them at all "would be acting against the implicit logic of the Constitution’s description of impeachment."

This piece concludes, "But if the House never sends the articles, then Trump could say with strong justification that he was never actually impeached. And that’s probably not the message Congressional Democrats are hoping to send."

Feldman testified alongside three other scholars in front of the House Judiciary Committee earlier this month. They did so in order to share their professional viewpoints on the constitutional grounds for impeaching the president.