House Democrats have now sanctioned their impeachment investigation into President Trump with a House floor vote. However, Congress remains in the dark about when the proceedings will move out of a secure hearing room in the Capitol basement and into public view.
The House approved a resolution by a vote of 232-196 that affirms the impeachment investigation Democratic House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff of California has been conducting behind closed doors since September.
The measure also outlines how the House will eventually proceed with public hearings run by the intelligence panel, which so far has interviewed a string of witnesses in secret.
The resolution calls for the panel to write a report and transmit its findings to the Judiciary Committee, which would draft any articles of impeachment.
Lawmakers don’t know when that will happen.
“It depends on how many witnesses, etcetera,” Democratic Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler of New York said. “I can’t speculate on that.”
Democrats are building a case that would charge Trump with obstruction of justice and abuse of power for seeking Ukraine’s help investigating his political rival, Joe Biden.
“The resolution, from the Intelligence Committee perspective, is setting out procedures for how to conduct the open hearings,” Schiff said after the resolution passed the House. “In the depositions that have been conducted so far, we have used a format that we believe is conducive to the fact-finding process. Those procedures now will be incorporated in the open hearings.”
Schiff couldn’t tell reporters when public hearings will begin or who would testify.
The intelligence panel has invited more witnesses to testify next week in closed session, among them former national security adviser John Bolton.
The format Schiff is using in the closed-door depositions departs from a typical congressional hearing where lawmakers run the inquiry.
Instead, Schiff is allowing lawyers for both the majority and minority to question witnesses for 25 minutes each before any lawmaker can participate.
Schiff said he plans to use a similar format when he conducts an open hearing and that questioning by both staff and lawmakers would be divided equally between Republicans and Democrats.
The House-passed resolution also authorizes Schiff to release the transcripts of the depositions conducted so far. Schiff has not indicated when he’ll do that.
Lawmakers have heard testimony from a string of current and former administration officials who Democrats believe can provide information about Trump’s effort to get Ukrainian government officials to investigate Biden as well as efforts by Democrats to interfere in the 2016 election.
Republicans have condemned the process as illegitimate and say it lacks due process for the president, who denies wrongdoing.
All GOP lawmakers voted against the impeachment resolution.
“Trying to put a ribbon on a sham process doesn’t make it any less of a sham,” Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the top Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, said.
Witnesses who have testified in closed session so far include U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland and former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, who Trump recalled three months before the end of her term.
Lawmakers this week interviewed Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who said he was listening in on the July 25 call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and was alarmed to hear Trump seek Zelensky’s help investigating Biden.
The National Security Council’s senior director for European affairs, Timothy Morrison, testified Thursday that Sondland told Ukrainian officials the country would receive $400 million in security aid if they would investigate allegations involving Biden.
Morrison told the panel he does not believe anyone acted improperly, including Trump.
Under the plan approved by the House, Trump won’t get a chance to defend himself until the Judiciary Committee takes over. At that point, White House counsel Pat Cipollone will be permitted to participate in the proceedings.
“The White House counsel would be shut out of this process,” Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, who is the top Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee, said.
Nadler explained that Trump’s lawyer is excluded from the intelligence proceedings because it is a fact-finding mission. Once it reaches the judiciary panel, it is “at a different stage … and it is proper that the president have more recourse at that point.”
Democrats have become increasingly vague about when they hope to conclude the whole impeachment matter and send it to the Senate, which would be tasked with conducting a trial that could take weeks.
At one point, House lawmakers predicted they would finish in November, but now even a year-end conclusion is in doubt as the witness list expanded.
“I don’t think anybody ever set an end-of-the-year deadline,” Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, told reporters. “What we have said is that we want to do this expeditiously. We still want to do this expeditiously, but we are not bound by any time deadline. This is a weighty, important issue.”
