Is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi using the articles of impeachment as a way to meddle in the Democratic presidential primary?

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is making the argument that the Senate will take up President Trump’s trial at the precise time Sen. Bernie Sanders needs to be campaigning in the early states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

“This benefits Joe Biden. This harms Sen. Sanders who is in first place (in Iowa) and could become their nominee,” McCarthy argued to Maria Bartiromo on Sunday.

He said Sanders will be “stuck in a chair” in the Senate. The same can be said for another Biden rival, Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

The Iowa caucuses are 21 days away, and Pelosi is expected to transmit the articles of impeachment to the Senate, setting the stage for a trail to begin this week or next.

It wouldn’t be the first time establishment Democrats have sought to undermine a Sanders presidential candidacy.

Newsweek reported in 2017:

Hillary Clinton’s campaign took over the Democratic National Committee’s funding and day-to-day operations early in the primary season and may have used that power to undermine her rival Senator Bernie Sanders, according to the party’s one-time interim chairwoman.

The DNC official, Donna Brazile, now a political analyst, wrote in Politico Magazine on Thursday that she discovered an August 2015 agreement between the national committee and Clinton’s campaign and fundraising arm that gave Clinton “control (of) the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised” in exchange for taking care of the massive debt leftover from President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign.

It wasn’t illegal, Brazile said, “but it sure looked unethical.”

“If the fight had been fair, one campaign would not have control of the party before the voters had decided which one they wanted to lead,” Brazile wrote. “This was not a criminal act, but as I saw it, it compromised the party’s integrity.”