WASHINGTON — The day after the House cast historic votes to impeach President Trump, Democrats grappled on Thursday with when to send the charges to the Republican-led Senate, hoping to gain leverage in a bicameral clash over the contours of an election-year trial.
With some leading Democrats pushing to delay transmittal of the articles and others advocating that they be withheld altogether, it appeared increasingly likely that the limbo could persist until the new year. The House is poised to leave town on Friday for the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, possibly without taking the votes that would be required to start the process in the Senate.
“We are ready,” said Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who said Wednesday night that she was reluctant to send the charges or name the lawmakers who would prosecute the case against Mr. Trump until she was certain of a fair process for a Senate trial. “When we see what they have, we will know who and how many we will send over.”
Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, has complicated the picture for Democrats by asserting that he has no intention of acting as an impartial juror in a Senate trial of Mr. Trump, but would instead do everything in his power, working in concert with the White House, to quickly acquit the president.
But if Ms. Pelosi was angling for an upper hand in negotiations about how the trial would proceed, Mr. McConnell quickly squashed the notion on Thursday in a scathing speech in which he denounced her and Democrats for impeaching Mr. Trump.
“The vote did not reflect what had been proven; it only reflects how they feel about the president,” Mr. McConnell said from the Senate floor. “The Senate must put this right. We must rise to this occasion. There is only one outcome that is suited to the paucity of evidence, the failed inquiry, the slapdash case.”
And in comments that underscored the risks Ms. Pelosi faces in withholding the articles, Mr. McConnell effectively argued that the delay reflected a weak case against Mr. Trump, a blink by the Democrats in their standoff with the president.
“The prosecutors are getting cold feet in front of the entire country and second-guessing whether they even want to go to trial,” Mr. McConnell said. “They said impeachment was so urgent that it could not even wait for due process, but now they’re content to sit on their hands. This is comical.”
Mr. Trump, echoing Mr. McConnell’s remarks, took to Twitter to attack what he called a “pathetic” case.
“Pelosi feels her phony impeachment HOAX is so pathetic she is afraid to present it to the Senate, which can set a date and put this whole SCAM into default if they refuse to show up!” Mr. Trump wrote. “The Do Nothings are so bad for our Country!”
The angry tone of the comments reflected what people close to the president have said is a keen desire by Mr. Trump to be publicly vindicated in a Senate trial, a prospect that Ms. Pelosi now appears to be placing in jeopardy.
Nerves were raw on both sides of the aisle on the morning after the House voted to impeach Mr. Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress related to his campaign to pressure Ukraine to smear Democratic rivals, making him only the third president to be impeached.
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, called Mr. McConnell’s speech a “30-minute partisan screed.” Later, he met with Ms. Pelosi behind closed doors to plan strategy.
In the House, Ms. Pelosi shot back at Mr. McConnell: “I don’t think anybody expected that we would have a rogue president and a rogue leader in the Senate at the same time.”
And even as the next step in the process remained murky, she said Democrats had been receiving accolades from people across the country who were buoyed by the House action to charge Mr. Trump with high crimes and misdemeanors.
“Seems like people have a spring in their step because the president was held accountable for his reckless behavior,” Ms. Pelosi told reporters on Capitol Hill. “No one is above the law, and the president has been held accountable.”
But the conflict in Congress over how to proceed made clear that rather than rise above the partisan vitriol that permeated the House’s impeachment inquiry and its vote on Wednesday, the Senate — traditionally the cooler-headed chamber — may replicate it. It did not bode well for negotiations between the two Senate leaders, who were expected to meet later on Thursday to discuss the parameters of a trial.
Some leading Democrats have cast doubt on whether a Senate trial will happen at all.
On Thursday morning, Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the No. 3 House Democrat, said he was willing to wait “as long as it takes” to transmit the two impeachment articles approved Wednesday night.
“Until we can get some assurances from the majority leader that he is going to allow for a fair and impartial trial to take place, we would be crazy to walk in there knowing he has set up a kangaroo court,” Mr. Clyburn said Thursday morning on CNN.
Pressed on whether Democrats should withhold the articles permanently, pulling the plug on a Senate trial, Mr. Clyburn said his personal preference would be to do so unless Mr. McConnell relents.
“If it were me, yes, that is what I am saying — I have no idea what the speaker would do,” Mr. Clyburn said. “If you have a preordained outcome that is negative to your actions, why walk into it? I would much rather not take that chance.”
In her own news conference in the House on Thursday, Ms. Pelosi played down the delay over pressing charges in the Senate but declined repeatedly to offer a timeline for when the House might file its case. Ms. Pelosi has indicated she will work with House chairmen and Mr. Schumer to determine when the articles should be submitted and what meets her standard for fairness.
Mr. Schumer has already set forth his own detailed plan for a trial. In a letter sent Sunday night to Mr. McConnell, Mr. Schumer proposed a trial beginning Jan. 7 that would give each side a fixed amount of time to present its case, and called for four top White House officials who have not testified — including Mick Mulvaney, Mr. Trump’s acting chief of staff, and John R. Bolton, the president’s former national security adviser — to appear as witnesses.
Mr. McConnell quickly rejected the plan.
“Is the president’s case so weak that none of the president’s men can defend him under oath?” Mr. Schumer asked in a speech on the Senate floor Thursday morning.
Mr. Schumer said that Democrats wanted a “fair and speedy trial,” and that he had proposed a “very reasonable structure.”
“I have yet to hear one good argument why less evidence is better than more evidence particularly in such a serious moment,” he added.
In her news conference after Wednesday night’s vote, Ms. Pelosi did not indicate that she was contemplating holding the articles forever.
And while she did not say explicitly what she believes would constitute a fair trial, she indicated she would support the plan laid out by Mr. Schumer.
“We’d like to see a trial where it’s up to the senators to make their own decisions and working together, hopefully, in recognition of witnesses that the president withheld from us, the documents that president withheld from us,” Ms. Pelosi said.
A top ally of Mr. Trump’s, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, called the possibility that the House could hold back the articles a “constitutional extortion mechanism that is dangerous for the country.”
Mr. Graham, who is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said he spoke Thursday morning with Mr. Trump, who asked him, “What’s happening?”
“He’s puzzled,” Mr. Graham said. “I tried the best I could to explain it. I’m puzzled, too.”