WASHINGTON — The House Judiciary Committee late Thursday abruptly postponed a historic vote on articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, shutting down a 14-hour session that dragged with partisanship but was expected to end with the charges being sent to the full House for a vote next week.
Approval of the charges against the president is still expected early Friday in the committee. But the sudden turn punctuated the deep split in the Congress, and the nation, over impeaching the president. The committee, made up of some of the most strident Democrats and Republicans in the House, clashed for all day and into the night as Republicans insisted on lengthy debate on amendments designed to kill the two formal charges but with no hope of winning votes from the majority Democrats.
Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said the committee would resume the session at 10 a.m. Friday.
“It is now very late at night,” Nadler said after presiding over the two-day session. “I want the members on both sides of the aisle to think about what has happened over these past two days and to search their consciences before they cast their final votes.”
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.
The Republicans on the panel, blindsided by the move, were livid. Congress was set to be out of session on Friday and many lawmakers had other plans, some outside of Washington.
“This is the kangaroo court we’re talking about” stormed Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, the top Republican on the panel. “They do not care about rules, they have one thing, their hatred of Donald Trump. “
After slogging through the two days of hearings, Democrats didn’t want to jammed into late-hour voting, a dark of night session, that could later be used politically against them. The Democratic majority wanted to allow Republicans to offer as many amendments and not cut off debate, aides said. But as the process drew out, Democrats decided they would prefer to pass the articles in the light of day, the aides said.
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. 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 contend that Trump has engaged in a pattern of misconduct toward Russia dating back to the 2016 election campaign that special counsel Robert Mueller investigated. And they say his dealings with Ukraine have benefited its aggressive neighbor 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.
But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said late Thursday on Fox News, “There is zero chance the president will be removed from office.” He said he was hoping to have no GOP defections in the Senate trial next year.
The Judiciary Committee session drew out over two days, with both sides appealing to Americans’ sense of history — Democrats describing a 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.
“Very sad,” Trump said.
As lawmakers dug in for the second day at the stately hearing room in the Capitol, Nadler, D-N.Y., immediately asked for a full reading of the two articles of impeachment against the president as TV cameras carried the live proceedings . Then came a long day of fights over amendments, primarily by Republicans trying to stop the impeachment. They were being rejected by Democrats along party lines.
“The central issue of this impeachment is the corruption of our institutions that safeguard democracy by our president,” Nadler said. “We cannot tolerate a president subverting the fairness and integrity of our elections.”
