What happens next as the House prepares articles of impeachment against Trump?
Thursday morning House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked the Judiciary Committee to move forward with writing articles of impeachment after a two-month inquiry into President Donald Trump’s conduct with Ukraine.
‘’Our democracy is what is at stake,” the speaker said. “The president leaves us no choice but to act.”
Trump tweeted Thursday morning: “If you are going to impeach me, do it now, fast, so we can have a fair trial in the Senate, and so that our Country can get back to business.”
“We will have Schiff, the Bidens, Pelosi and many more testify, and will reveal, for the first time, how corrupt our system really is. I was elected to ‘Clean the Swamp,’ and that’s what I am doing!” Trump said on Twitter.
What comes next on impeachment?
Once the House Judiciary Committee prepares articles of impeachment, they will go to the full House for debate, according to Cornell University.
The articles of impeachment require a majority vote in the House. “Once an article is approved, the President is, technically speaking, ‘impeached’ — that is subject to trial in the Senate,” according to Cornell.
“The trial in the Senate is handled by ‘Managers’ from the House of Representatives, with the assistance of attorneys employed for the prosecution of the impeachment case,” according to FindLaw.
Senators act as the jury in an impeachment trial and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts would act as the judge.
“In the past the Senate has heard judicial impeachments by appointing a subcommittee especially for that purpose, which then reports its findings to the Senate as a whole,” FindLaw said.
“At the conclusion of the trial, the Senate votes on whether to remove the President from office. A two-thirds vote by the members present in the Senate is required for removal,” according to Cornell.
If the Senate votes to remove the president, Vice President Mike Pence would become president.
Ukraine conduct in question
The House Intelligence Committee has been investigating Trump for two months, focusing on whether he withheld aid money from Ukraine in exchange for that country investigating political rival Joe Biden’s family.
Committee Chairman Adam Schiff delivered the impeachment inquiry report this week, concluding, “President Trump’s scheme subverted U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine and undermined our national security in favor of two politically motivated investigations that would help his presidential reelection campaign.”
The report says Trump withheld $400 million in military aid to Ukraine as that country continued to fight a war with Russia. He wanted the Eastern European country to announce an investigation into Biden’s son.
A whistleblower complaint first brought attention to a call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, according to the Associated Press, Trump asked the Ukrainian president to investigate Hunter Biden and the debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, influenced the 2016 election.
After the Intelligence Committee finalized its report, the Judiciary Committee held its own hearing this week, inviting constitutional law professors to give their take on the impeachment proceedings and the Democrats’ charges against the president.
Michael Gerhardt, a distinguished professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law and author of “Impeachment: What Everyone Needs to Know,” testified Wednesday.
“The record compiled thus far shows that the president has committed several impeachable offenses, including bribery, abuse of power in soliciting a personal favor from a foreign leader to benefit his political campaign, obstructing Congress, and obstructing justice,” he said, according to written testimony released by the committee.
The president and Republicans in the House say what Trump did was not improper.
Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University Law School professor, disagreed with the other legal scholars who testified before the Judiciary Committee.
“I am concerned about lowering impeachment standards to fit a paucity of evidence and an abundance of anger. If the House proceeds solely on the Ukrainian allegations, this impeachment would stand out among modern impeachments as the shortest proceeding, with the thinnest evidentiary record, and the narrowest grounds ever used to impeach a president,” he said, according to his written testimony.
This story was originally published December 5, 2019 at 10:09 AM.
