House panel presses toward historic Trump impeachment vote

The House Judiciary Committee pushed deliberately toward a historic vote Thursday to approve articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, split sharply along party lines. The daylong session was expected to end with charges being sent to the full House for action next week, before the holidays.

The committee, made up of some of the most strident Democrats and Republicans in Congress, clashed for hours in pointed and at times emotional debate, drawing on history and the Constitution to argue over the two charges. Trump is accused, in the first article, of abusing his presidential power by asking Ukraine to investigate his 2020 rival, Joe Biden, while holding military aid as leverage, and, in the second, of obstructing Congress by blocking the House's efforts to probe his actions.

Trump is only the fourth U.S. president to face impeachment proceedings and the first to be running for reelection at the same time. He insists he did nothing wrong and blasts the Democrats' effort daily as a sham and harmful to America. Republican allies seem unwavering in their opposition to expelling Trump, and he claims to be looking ahead to swift acquittal in a Senate trial.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi sounded confident Thursday that Democrats, who once tried to avoid a solely partisan effort, will have the votes to impeach the president without Republican support when the full House votes next week. But she said it was up to individual lawmakers to weigh the evidence.

“The fact is we take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," Pelosi told reporters. "No one is above the law; the president will be held accountable for his abuse of power and for his obstruction of Congress.”

The outcome poses potentially serious political consequences for both parties ahead of the 2020 elections, with Americans deeply divided over whether the president indeed conducted impeachable acts and if it should be up to Congress, or the voters, to decide whether he should remain in office.

The president has refused to participate in the proceedings, tweeting criticisms as he did Thursday from the sidelines, mocking the charges against him in the House's nine-page resolution as “impeachment light.” But Pelosi said the president was wrong and the case against him is deeply grounded.

Democrats note that the investigations go back to special counsel Robert Mueller's probe of the 2016 election that put Trump in the White House. And they say his dealings with Ukraine have benefited its aggressive neighbour Russia, not the U.S., and he must be prevented from "corrupting" U.S. elections again and cheating his way to a second term next year.

"It is urgent,” Pelosi said.

The Judiciary Committee session drew out over two days, with both sides appealing to Americans' sense of history — Democrats describing a sense of duty to stop what one called the president’s “constitutional crime spree” and Republicans decrying what one said was the “hot garbage’’ impeachment and what it means for the future of the country.

Trump, apparently watching the live proceedings on television, tweeted his disapproval of two Democratic women on the panel, Reps. Veronica Escobar and Sheila Jackson Lee, both of Texas. He called their comments about his actions inaccurate.

“Very sad,” Trump tweeted.

The House is expected to vote on the articles next week, in the days before Christmas. That would send them to the Senate for a 2020 trial.