Q&A: Are the Democrats starting impeachment, or not?

WASHINGTON >> The messages coming from House Democrats on impeachment in recent weeks are decidedly confusing.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said Democrats need to wait for court decisions before they decide whether to approve articles of impeachment. At the same time, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler, said Thursday that what his committee is doing now amounts to “formal impeachment proceedings” — and that Democrats will make a final decision by the end of the year.

So are Democrats starting impeachment, or not? And will President Donald Trump ultimately be removed from office?

Sort of. And almost certainly not.

Questions and answers about the impeachment debate: of one of the Mueller report’s key witnesses, former White House Counsel Donald McGahn. And last month the panel filed a petition to obtain secret grand jury testimony underlying the Mueller report. Both lawsuits made the argument that the committee needs to hear from witnesses and know more about Mueller’s findings to decide whether to recommend impeachment to the full House. influence his investigation and said he could not exonerate him. Pelosi says now that she wants to see the outcome of the court cases and get more information from the Trump administration.

“If we have a case for impeachment that’s the place we will have to go,” she said in July, while making it clear that she doesn’t believe the House has yet made that case.

Recently, Nadler and other Democrats on the committee have laid out a new strategy: saying that impeachment proceedings have already started, with or without a formal vote to begin them.

“This is formal impeachment proceedings,” Nadler said on CNN Thursday evening, adding that he hoped by the end of the year that the panel would decide whether to vote to recommend articles. ready to start the process for quite some time and have put pressure on the speaker.

Still, lawmakers close to the matter say the two sides are essentially saying the same thing — that they are doing the work of impeachment and a final decision will be made later in the year.

“I think we’re unified on this question,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the committee. inquiry — one more than half of the caucus. Not all of them would support an impeachment vote at this point.

Those calls appear mostly symbolic, for now, as Nadler has declared the committee is already doing the work of impeachment.