House to take first vote on Trump impeachment inquiry
WASHINGTON – House Democrats have decided to hold a formal vote on impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump, a step they had resisted for several weeks, and one that will provide the first public test of sentiment in the House on the divisive issue.
The vote could come as early as Thursday, Democratic leaders said.
Enough Democrats have publicly said that they support the inquiry, which has been underway since late September, that the outcome is not significantly in doubt. But each side will be watching to see how many defections the other suffers.
At this point, all but a handful of the 234 Democrats in the House have indicated they support at least an inquiry into whether Trump has committed an impeachable offense; so has one independent, Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, who left Republican ranks because of his opposition to Trump’s actions.
Early in the process, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-calif., sought to shield Democrats from swing districts from voting on the issue. As support for the inquiry has grown among Democratic voters, that has stopped being a concern, although some of the details of the resolution, and what rights it might give to the Republican minority, have remained an issue.
None of the 197 Republicans has said publicly that they back an inquiry, although several have indicated that they would be open to supporting one. Whether any of them will be willing to break ranks on a formal vote remains unknown, and the White House and Republican leaders immediately began trying to discourage defections by casting the vote as too little, too late.
The impeachment inquiry centers on Trump’s actions toward Ukraine. So far House investigators have taken depositions from a number of witnesses who have described how Trump ran policy toward that country through a back channel heavily influenced by his personal lawyer, Rudolph
W. Giuliani.
The witnesses have told investigators that the president ordered important military aid to Ukraine frozen as Giuliani and other White House emissaries pressured the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to make a public statement about investigating former Vice President Joe Biden and his son,
Hunter, and Trump’s groundless belief that Ukraine actively supported Democrats in the 2016 presidential election.
The resolution would lay out ground rules for the public part of the impeachment inquiry, which is expected to begin in November, after several weeks in which House committees have interviewed witnesses behind closed doors. It will also establish procedures for the next steps in the inquiry.
Those public hearings will be led by the House Intelligence Committee, the panel’s chairman, Rep. Adam B. Schiff, D-calif., said.
The resolution, the text of which will be filed Tuesday, is aimed at “ensuring transparency and providing a clear path forward,” House Rules Committee Chairman Jim Mcgovern, Dmass., said in a statement Monday.
That would do nothing to fix the flaws in the existing process, House Republican leader Kevin Mccarthy of California insisted.
“It’s been 34 days since Nancy Pelosi unilaterally declared her impeachment inquiry. Today’s backtracking is an admission that this process has been botched from the start,” he said on Twitter. Although Republicans have previously demanded that the full House vote to authorize any impeachment inquiry, “we will not legitimize the Schiff/pelosi sham impeachment,” he said.