House Judiciary Planning to Vote Next Week to Formally Define Trump Impeachment Probe

The House Judiciary Committee, led by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), is planning to take its first formal vote on its “impeachment investigation” into President Donald Trump, which could come as early as next week.

According to Politico, the vote will be geared toward defining the scope of the impeachment probe and a draft of the resolution will be made public on Monday.

“A source familiar with the discussion said any move next week would be intended to increase the ‘officialness’ of the ongoing probe,” Politico reports. “Democrats are hopeful that explicitly defining their impeachment inquiry will heighten their leverage to compel testimony from witnesses.”

Nadler first confirmed his committee was conducting an impeachment inquiry in early August. But the summer Congressional recess and other Trump controversies have pushed impeachment out of the headlines. This vote is intended to recapture the inquiry’s momentum as the number of Democrats favoring impeachment has continued to steadily increase since Robert Mueller’s Congressional testimony in late June. Per the latest count, 134 House Democrats — and 17 of the 24 Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee — support impeachment proceedings against the president.

This vote, which focuses on the numerous instances of potential obstruction of justice by Trump laid out in the Mueller Report, isn’t the only avenue of investigation, however, per Politico.

“The Judiciary Committee is weighing allegations that Trump directed hush money payments to women accusing him of extramarital affairs in the weeks before the 2016 election, as well as evidence that Trump has sought to steer U.S. and foreign government spending to his luxury resorts, raising questions about whether he has violated the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause,” the story notes.

Photo credit: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images.

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