It's starting to look like the House vote to impeach President Trump was the impeachment that wasn't.

Ian Macfarlane

"It's starting to look like the House vote to impeach President Trump was the impeachment that wasn't.

"That's the word from a lot of legal scholars, including Noah Feldman, who was one of the three leftist professors who spoke before the House Judiciary committee, arguing for impeaching Trump. shortly before the Democrats' deed was done.

"In a Bloomberg column, Feldman wrote:

 Impeachment as contemplated by the Constitution does not consist merely of the vote by the House, but of the process of sending the articles to the Senate for 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.

...and...

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's a bigwig in his own Harvard Law circles and Democrats certainly take his word for it on the importance of impeaching Trump. But he's far from the only one reading the law to say that as it's being excuted now, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declaring she might not send the articles of impeachment for the Senate to vote on until she can dictate terms, she's invalidating her own impeachment.

"Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, a conservative, pretty much says the same thing. In a National Review column, he wrote:" . . .

If Impeachment Articles Are Not Delivered, Did Impeachment Happen?
"It’s hard to believe the Speaker’s latest stunt will go on for very long.
. . . "For these last weeks, the Democrat-dominated chamber has been in a mad rush to impeach the president. Democrats even tacked on article two — “obstruction of Congress” — because, they told us, time could not be wasted engaging in the usual negotiation and litigation over legislative demands for executive branch information. Trump is a clear and present threat to “continue” undermining our elections, we were admonished. That’s why he needs to be impeached right now. That’s why the political class cannot responsibly leave his fate up to the sovereign, the People, who will vote in November.

"But now that the deed is done, it’s . . . hey, not so fast." . . .