State Of The Union: Speaker Invites Trump To Deliver Speech Whether Or Not Impeachment Trial Over

House Speaker Nancy, just two days after the lower chamber of Congress voted to impeach Donald Trump, on Friday invited the president to deliver the State of the Union address in early February as Trump raged against Christianity Today magazine, which called him “profoundly immoral.”

Pelosi, who declined to transmit two articles of impeachment immediately to the Senate where a trial would take place, invited Trump to deliver the annual address assessing the country’s situation on Feb. 4. It was unclear whether a Senate trial will be over by then.

In 1999, Bill Clinton delivered his penultimate State of the Union address on the same day his defense team opened their case in his Senate trial. He did not mention impeachment.

“In their great wisdom, our founders crafted a Constitution based on a system of separation of powers: three co-equal branches acting as checks on each other. To ensure that balance of powers, the Constitution calls for the president to ‘from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the Union,’” Pelosi wrote in a letter to the White House. She said she was extending the invitation “in the spirit of respecting our Constitution.”

The president accepted the invitation Friday afternoon.

Trump technically is not impeached until the articles are sent to the Senate. The House accused him of abusing the power of his office for personal gain and then blocking Congress from investigating his conduct.

Pelosi said she would hold the articles back, hoping for a bipartisan agreement on how a Senate trial would be conducted. Democrats want to call witnesses, but Senate Majority Mitch McConnell has ruled that out and declared talks at an impasse. With Congress currently in recess, the earliest the articles could be sent to the Senate is Jan. 7. The Constitution provides no timetable for the process.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who led the impeachment investigation, said he’s hoping documents the administration kept out of the impeachment investigators’ hands are released during a Senate trial.

“The few messages we did get were remarkably incriminating,” Schiff said in an interview with the Washington Post. “So you can only imagine, if this is what the small sample of documents that we have shows, just how damning many of the other documents the administration refuses to turn over may be.”

Meanwhile, Trump lashed out at Christianity Today, boasting has done more for the Evangelical community than any other president. Trump accused the magazine, which was developed by the Rev. Billy Graham, of seeking for president “a Radical Left nonbeliever, who wants to take your religion and your guns.”

In an editorial, Christianity Today said Trump “should be removed from office by the Senate or by popular vote next election—that is a matter of prudential judgment. That he should be removed, we believe, is not a matter of partisan loyalties but loyalty to the creator of the Ten Commandments.”

Editor in chief Mark Galli, who is retiring from the magazine Jan. 3, called Trump’s actions “profoundly immoral.” He also called out evangelicals who have been turning a blind eye to Trump’s actions.

Galli told the Washington Post Trump had mischaracterized the magazine’s political bent, saying it’s centrist or even center right, not radical left.

“We don’t comment on larger national issues except when they rise to a level of moral influence. ... That’s not who we are,” Galli said.