On Sunday morning, the House Judiciary Committee submitted a report to the House Rules Committee to supplement a summarization of the case against Republican, President Donald Trump, in his pending impeachment.
The impeachment articles claim the president violated numerous federal laws. The Sunday morning report is meant to supplement the original two articles of impeachment the Judiciary Committee approved on Friday (December 13, 2019).
The impeachment articles address the investigation of President Trump’s role in pressuring the Ukraine government into investigating presidential candidate and opponent, Joe Biden. The president is facing one charge of abuse of power for his role in asking the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, as well as one count for obstructing Congress’ investigation into this matter.
It is likely that the Democratic-led House of Representatives will vote on this as early as Wednesday (12/16/19). If the House votes in favor of impeachment, this will make President Trump only the third president in U.S. history to be impeached, albeit no president has actually been removed from office because of impeachment.
If the House votes in favor of approving the charges against Trump, the matter will be sent to the Republican-led Senate where it will need to win at least ⅔ a majority of the vote to remove the president from office. The Senate is comprised of 100 seats, of which the Republicans currently hold 53.
The rules of engagement for the vote will be discussed amongst Democrats and Republicans on Tuesday. In what is anticipated to be a marathon meeting, the House Rules Committee will establish the amount of time that will be set aside for debate on Wednesday before lawmakers vote on the two articles of impeachment.
Many people expect that the Democrat-controlled House will vote along partisan lines in favor of approving the impeachment.