House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has her reasons for limiting her impeachment articles to offenses stemming from the abuses and violations related to Ukraine. Unfortunately, she declined to pursue a broader impeachment approach that recognizes multiple provable, serious violations of the Constitution. Speaker Pelosi overruled Chairs of Committees, including the Judiciary Committee, and other senior lawmakers who wanted to forward to the Senate a broader array of impeachable offenses.

Having lost four of the last five House elections to the worst Republican Party in history, Speaker Pelosi remains cautious. She is overly worried about the conservative Democrats who won congressional seats in 2018 in Republican, pro-Trump districts. Endangering their seats might, Pelosi fears, lead to the loss of the House in 2020 and, more immediately, risk not having the votes in the House to pass additional impeachable offenses.

According to a report from Politico, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is under pressure from the White House and some of his Republican colleagues to move quickly to acquit Donald Trump by speeding up his impeachment trial while not upsetting some wavering GOP lawmakers who are fearful for their reputations in an election year.

The report notes that a Trump acquittal is a foregone conclusion, with GOP lawmakers admitting as much.

“The question is going to come to ‘Have you heard enough to make a decision or do you want witnesses?’ If people say, ‘We’re ready to vote,’ we’re going to vote right then,” explained Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY).