On Thursday, the House Judiciary Committee is expected to vote on articles of impeachment charging President Donald Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The session is expected to be contentious. This should come as no surprise, given the tone of impeachment-inquiry hearings over the past few weeks. David Rohde wrote that Monday’s Judiciary Committee hearing was a “partisan brawl,” one that ended “in shouts and denunciations.”
On Tuesday, after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi introduced the two articles of impeachment, John Cassidy wrote that Pelosi had been skeptical of pursuing impeachment but is now “firmly behind impeachment on the grounds that Trump’s effort to extort the President of Ukraine into providing him with dirt on his domestic opponents was just too egregious to ignore.” Some have criticized Pelosi and Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, for moving the process along too quickly—more time might have brought court orders for testimony from Administration officials such as John Bolton and Mick Mulvaney and for White House documents that so far have been withheld. Rohde wrote that “Democrats, arguably, are cutting corners as they push ahead with their plans for a House impeachment vote by the end of next week. Republicans are demonstrating that they will dismiss any finding, evidence, or fact that does not fit the President’s political narrative.”
Democrats outnumber Republicans in the Judiciary Committee twenty-four to seventeen, and the Committee is likely to approve the articles of impeachment, sending them to a vote from the entire House of Representatives. With House rules dictating that each committee member can speak for up to five minutes on any proposed amendment, Thursday’s meeting could run very long. But the holiday season may cap the meeting at 7 P.M., when many of the members—especially Republicans—are expected to head to the Congressional Ball, at the White House. You can watch the day’s proceedings on the live stream above.
