Nadler says he expects to be named impeachment manager

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday that he expects to be named an impeachment manager by House Democrats following Wednesday’s floor vote to send articles of impeachment to the Senate.

Nadler told reporters in the Capitol that he didn’t know the names of lawmakers Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) plans to announce as prosecutors for the Senate impeachment trial, but when asked directly by CNN’s Manu Raju if he would be named one, Nadler replied: “I’d expect so.”

His comments come ahead of Wednesday’s planned vote on a resolution to name the impeachment managers and send the articles of impeachment to the Senate and follow a closed-door meeting with Pelosi and other top Democrats on the caucus’s plans.

“The American people will fully understand the Senate’s move to begin the trial without witnesses and documents as a pure political cover-up,” Pelosi said Tuesday, according to CNN. “[Senate Majority] Leader [Mitch] McConnell and the president are afraid of more facts coming to light. The American people deserve the truth, and the Constitution demands a trial.”

McConnell (R-Ky.) responded in his own statement, blaming House Democrats for starting the impeachment inquiry and promising to “end it with seriousness and sobriety.”

“A House majority, fueled by political animus, may have started this with frivolity. But it will fall to the Senate to end it with seriousness and sobriety,” McConnell said Tuesday, according to CNN. “It will fall to us to do what the founders intended — to take the long view, move beyond partisan passions and do what the long-term good of our institutions and our nation demands.”

Pelosi and McConnell have battled for weeks over her unwillingness to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate for a trial without McConnell’s guarantee that Democrats will be able to call witnesses and hear testimony.

Several Republican senators, including Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), have shown an openness to allowing further testimony from witnesses during a Senate trial in recent days, while McConnell has reportedly signed on to a measure that would allow the articles to be dismissed without a trial.