“There’s a lot at stake for the Democrats should they take a shot and miss.”

But even as support builds on the left, the prospect of getting it done seems remote. A majority of the American public doesn’t think the House should seriously consider impeaching Trump, according to a series of three USA TODAY/Suffolk University polls this year. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has tamped down expectations by saying the American people must be persuaded with the strongest possible case.

The result is that Democratic lawmakers return to Washington in a delicate position. A majority of the Democratic caucus leading the House, which is the chamber in charge of deciding whether to impeach the president, have come out in favor, putting

Democrats are moving forward with inquiries that could keep Trump’s conduct in the spotlight, regardless of where they lead.

pressure on the chamber’s leaders to move forward. But those calls have gained momentum at a time when most Americans disagree, and when the party already is trying to find a way to defeat Trump in the 2020 election.

“Nancy Pelosi is a pretty good student of history, and she recognizes what a disaster this would be so close to the 2020 election, particularly if you look at the polls,” said Ford O’Connell, an adjunct professor at George Washington University’s graduate school of political management and Republican presidential strategist. “She knows better.”

The political risk for Democrats is that impeaching Trump could draw sympathy to him. After the Republicancontrolled House voted to impeach President Bill Clinton in 1998, his fellow Democrats gained a handful of seats in the House that year and then a handful of seats in both chambers the following election. Trump himself has called the inquiries a partisan witch hunt.

The inquiries – into Trump’s efforts to thwart the special counsel probe as possible obstruction of justice, into his namesake business whose profits could violate provisions of the Constitution, into his role in paying off a porn star for her silence about an alleged sexual encounter before the election – are likely to linger through the primaries. But political experts and key lawmakers expect a decision on impeachment in the fall, because starting in the election year would appear opportunistic.

The march goes on

“It’s moved off of ‘do we have enough evidence, what’s the standard of proof, is it a high crime and misdemeanor,’ and it’s become a complete political question at this point,” said David Weinstein, a former assistant U.S. attorney now in private practice in Miami. “There’s a lot at stake for the Democrats should they take a shot and miss.”

Meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers are moving forward with a series of lawsuits, subpoenas and planned hearings that could keep Trump’s conduct in the spotlight, regardless of where they lead.

The House is pursuing inquiries on a variety of fronts. One federal appeals court is set to decide whether the House Intelligence and Financial Services committees can obtain access to Trump’s documents from his lenders, Deutsche Bank and Capital One. Deutsche Bank revealed Tuesday in a court filing that Trump’s tax returns, which several committees sought and which Trump fought to keep confidential, are among the documents falling under the subpoena. Another appeals court in Washington is weighing whether the Oversight and Reform Committee can force Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, to turn over financial documents.

Decisions in each appeals case could come any day. Depending on the results, the cases could wind up before the Supreme Court.

In another case, the Judiciary Committee asked U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell to grant Congress access to grand jury evidence from Mueller’s investigation. Howell set deadlines for the Justice Department and the House to submit their arguments by the end of September. The committee also asked U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for an expedited decision on whether to force former White House counsel Don McGahn to testify about Trump directing him to remove Mueller.

Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, DN.Y., has said that if the House wins the cases involving McGahn and grand jury information, it would “break the logjam” of administration resistance.

At the same time, House leaders have said they plan to continue a series of hearings that could refocus public attention on the controversies that have hung over Trump even if they don’t reveal any new details.

“I think the hearings largely serve a political purpose, keeping this issue at the forefront of the public’s mind heading into the fall and the campaign season,” said Daniel Medwed, who followed the Mueller inquiry as a professor of criminal law and procedure at Northeastern University.

To continue building its case, the Judiciary Committee set a hearing Sept. 17 with Lewandowski and two former White House aides, deputy chief of staff Rick Dearborn and staff secretary Rob Porter. The Mueller report described Trump asking Lewandowski to tell then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to limit the Russia inquiry or potentially fire him. Lewandowski decided not to follow the directive and asked Dearborn to do it instead. Dearborn also decided not to act.

The committee also wants to hear from McGahn himself, if the court enforces the subpoena. Pelosi and Nadler have said the Mueller report describes incidents of apparent obstruction of justice. Trump has called the inquiries “presidential harassment.”

A messy political question

What the end product of those hearings and lawsuits might be is a question that will occupy House Democrats as they return to Washington.

Lawmakers over the summer returned to their districts, where many Democrats fielded questions from voters. As they did, the number of Democrats who have said the House should at least begin a formal impeachment inquiry swelled to more than half of the party’s caucus.

Among those who stepped forward in August was the fourth-ranking Democrat in the House, Rep. Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico. And Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., who serves on the Intelligence and Oversight committees investigating Trump, said in a statement Aug. 26 that “we have now come to a point where we must engage in an investigation to not only expose wrongdoing and prevent it from happening again, but also to determine whether the current president engaged in behavior meriting the beginning of impeachment proceedings.”

But the announcements offer few hints of their endgame. Many of the Democrats who have called for impeachment hold relatively safe seats. If the full House fails to act, individual lawmakers could say they tried. And if the House impeaches Trump but the Republican-controlled Senate declines to remove him from office, Democrats could blame the other chamber. “It’s actually a very good situation for Democrats politically,” Medwed said.