Impeachment showdown: As Trump trial looms, Nancy Pelosi and GOP spar over next steps

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WASHINGTON – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday she won't be rushed to send over the two articles of impeachment even as Senate Republicans push for a speedy trial to acquit President Donald Trump.

A day after the House's historic vote approving articles accusing Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, Pelosi said details remain to be worked out before they can be transmitted, such as which lawmakers Democratic leaders will pick to serve as prosecutors, or managers, in the Senate trial.

"I’m not prepared to put the managers in that bill because we don’t know the arena we are in," she said. “Frankly, I don’t care what the Republicans say.”

The speaker said it wouldn't take long to prepare the articles for transmission, but Democrats first want to see how Senate Republicans plan to conduct the trial.

"We are ready," she said. "When we see what they have, we will know who and how many (managers) we will send over."

Pelosi spoke after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., went on the Senate floor and derided the House-passed articles of impeachment as “historically thin (and) unconstitutionally incoherent.”

McConnell said any delay Pelosi contemplates suggests the Democrats are “too afraid to even transmit their shoddy work project to the Senate. … It looks like the prosecutors are getting cold feet in front of the entire country and second-guessing whether they even want to go to trial.”

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Trump called for an immediate trial as well, taunting Democrats Thursday by welcoming Rep. Jefferson Van Drew to the Oval Office. Van Drew of New Jersey was one of only two Democrats in the House to vote against both articles of impeachment Wednesday.

By holding off on sending the articles, Pelosi would essentially leave the president hanging: stained by impeachment but unable to claim exoneration from a likely acquittal in the Republican-controlled Senate where a guilty verdict would require at least 20 GOP senators to defect.

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McConnell said he wants a quick trial that would call no witnesses, conditions Democrats fiercely oppose.

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said McConnell's plan would create the “most rushed, least thorough impeachment trial in modern history.”

Pelosi said all she wants is a fair trial.

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“It reminded me that our founders, when they wrote the Constitution, they suspected there could be a rogue president," she said. "I don't think they suspected we could have a rogue president and a rogue leader in the Senate at the same time."

Trump became the third president in history to be impeached Wednesday after a bitterly divided House formally charged him with "high crimes and misdemeanors" over his request to Ukraine to investigate a political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.

Contributing: Maureen Groppe