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Juan williams and co-host of the five. david asman anchor of bulls and bears and james freeman assistant editor of the "wall street journal" editorial page and fox news contributors. james, what is nancy pelosi thinking? >> good question. i don't think she is helping people take this process more seriously. she is trying to assert powers of the senate. the house does impeachments. the senate does trials. so by this bizarre delay she is trying to set the rules of that senate trial. that is not a power she enjoys under the constitution. >> sandra: she appears to be waiting for leverage, juan. wi...

In the midst of this. >> jessica, the point is you don't get to hear from those witnesses if the game of the day is i'm going to block for as long as i can. talk to me about what she can and cannot do. >> i think at this point she is duty bound in our constitution to transmit the articles. does it have to be this afternoon? no. >> can she wait until 2020? >> in my judgment now. they can go on recess but three or four weeks, a month or two and she hasn't transferred them then i think of the constitutional issue. the fact is that when this reseeding is in the house, the constitution give the hou...

This process hopefully in a fairly short period of time in total coordination with the white house counsel's office and the people who are representing the president. >> he's part of the jury. he's planning on running the senate trial in his words in total coordination with the defendant in the trial. is that how it's supposed to go? actually, what are the rules for how it's supposed to go? joining us now is a professor of constitutional law at harvard. he was an adviser to president obama. he's been described as the most cited legal scholar in the united states. the author of over 40 books on...

The constitution doesn't provide for anything less than what constitutes an impeachable offense. you're going to have the chief justice of the supreme court of the united states, john roberts, come in. the question will be, will he be like the prior judge rehnquist, during the clinton impeachment trial who literally did court work and sat there and played cards. or would you have chief justice john roberts be activist. interestingly, republican judges usually say they're proud they won't be activist judges. but let's see if he'll be more involved to help donald trump. >> can i quickly play you...

40 matters including impeachment. so how much do we know about the rules? how proscribed are the rules of the senate for conducting an impeachment trial? >> the constitution doesn't specify what we know from alexander hamilton and we might say senator mcconnell meet alexander hamilton, is the senate is supposed to be independent and supposed to be impartial. and the whole idea is not to be closely coordinated with the person who's accused of committing an impeachable offense. so that's built into the leading commentary on the founding document. >> if that is not adhered to, if for example sena...