As Trump prosecutor, delegate gets her say on impeachment

WASHINGTON — Stacey Plaskett couldn’t cast a vote last month when the House impeached former President Donald Trump. “My method of handling things like this is to work,” Plaskett said, adding that receiving the unexpected call from Pelosi “really gave me a charge and something to do.” As an impeachment manager, it falls to Plaskett and the other Democrats to break through partisan divisions and persuade skeptical Republicans in the Senate — 45 of whom have already voted for an effort to dismiss the case — that they should take the unprecedented step of convicting Trump and barring him from office. You know, as an African-American, as a woman seeing individuals storming our most sacred place of democracy, wearing anti-Semitic, racist, neo-Nazi, white supremacy logos on their bodies and wreaking the most vile and hateful things.” The trial also gives Plaskett a chance to work alongside Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the lead impeachment manager who was one of her law school professors at American University’s Washington College of Law. At 13, she started at an exclusive Connecticut boarding school were she says she “continually had to raise my hand and try and speak to non-minority people about actions and events to let them see through a lens that what has happened is, in fact, racist or demonstrates their privilege.” Pelosi’s impeachment team is diverse — including Colorado Rep. Joe Neguse, who is also Black — but Plaskett will be the first manager of a presidential impeachment from a U.S. territory. “I’m going to make sure that their voice and the voice of people from territories representing four million Americans — Puerto Rico and other places — are actually heard.” ___ This story has been updated to correct that they are three Black senators now, not two, and the three are men.