House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler will miss the last procedural step in the chamber’s impeachment process to tend to a family emergency.
The House Rules Committee is scheduled on Tuesday to set the terms of the House’s upcoming floor debate ahead of voting on the two articles of impeachment against President Trump. Nadler, however, is away from Congress, because his wife Joyce Miller is ill. The New York Democrat is expected to return to Washington, D.C., late Tuesday or early Wednesday before the full House’s impeachment vote.
Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, another member of the Judiciary Committee, will be filling in for Nadler by presenting the articles of impeachment to the Rules Committee.
House lawmakers are weighing two articles of impeachment against the president, including abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, and are likely to vote along party lines Wednesday to impeach the third president in U.S. history.
The impeachment proceedings have centered on Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukraine, during which he asked the country to open investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden, who currently leads the pack of 2020 Democrats running to take on the president in the next general election. Lawmakers have been working to determine if the request was made for Trump’s own political gain and whether military aid or a state meeting were conditioned on the investigations.
Nadler and Miller have been married since 1976 and share one adult son, Michael. Miller is an adjunct professor at Columbia University, teaching in the School of International and Public Affairs. She has been chairwoman of her husband’s campaigns since 1992 and, at one point, was the president and CEO of consulting firm Tier One Public Strategies.
Additionally, Miller has served in several advisory roles in the New York state government, including sitting on the boards of the Empire State Development Corporation, the State of New York Mortgage Agency, and the New York State Housing Finance Agency. She also worked for the New York City Comptroller in the 1990s and early 2000s. She has an MBA in finance from New York University and a master’s degree in political science from Columbia University.
