House will vote on impeachment rules

Christal Hayes and Bart Jansen

WASHINGTON – The House of Representatives will vote this week to formalize impeachment inquiry procedures after weeks of resisting a full House vote and unrelenting attacks by Republicans.

The vote on the resolution is expected Thursday. The text was not immediately available, but it will lay out the next steps in the inquiry, including establishing procedures for public hearings, transferring the inquiry to the Judiciary Committee and outlining the rights of President Donald Trump and his attorneys.

It marks the first time House members will be forced to vote on the inquiry and puts several moderate Democrats and Republicans under scrutiny ahead of the 2020 election.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, DCalif.,

sent a letter to members outlining that the resolution sought to combat a key line of Republican attack: that the inquiry was illegitimate because there was no House vote on it.

“For weeks, the President, his Counsel in the White House, and his allies in Congress have made the baseless claim that the House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry ‘lacks the necessary authorization for a valid impeachment proceeding.’ They argue that, because the House has not taken a vote, they may simply pretend the impeachment inquiry does not exist,” Pelosi wrote Monday.

The White House and congressional Republicans have attacked the investigation as a “witch hunt.” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., accused Democrats of “backtracking” and said it was an admission that the inquiry “has been botched from the start.”