Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., voted along with 231 other House members Thursday in favor of an impeachment inquiry resolution that outlines the ground rules for the investigation into President Donald Trump.
The resolution, which Welch has called the “procedural road map” for the public impeachment investigation, passed almost completely along party lines. Reps. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., and Jeff Van Drew, D-N.J., were the lone Democrats who opposed the measure.
The resolution opens the way for the public phase of the inquiry into Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The U.S. president asked his Ukranian counterpart to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, who served on the board of Burisma Holdings, a natural gas company in the Ukraine, from 2014 to 2019.
A number of diplomats and security officials have since testified behind closed doors that the request was part of a campaign by the president and his advisers to pressure Ukraine to open an investigation into Biden, a political rival, in return for $400 million in military aid and a meeting with the Trump administration.
Republicans in Congress and the president have complained that Democrats have obscured the impeachment process by holding investigative hearings behind closed doors.
Now that Democrats have decided to hold public hearings, Trump’s allies in the House say the process has been tainted by the prior private sessions. The impeachment investigations of President Richard Nixon, a Republican, and President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, both started with closed door hearings.
Below is a breakdown of the resolution, which can be read here in full. Welch, as a member of both the intelligence and government oversight committees, will be intimately involved in the process.
- The resolution directs the six committees — intelligence, financial services, foreign affairs, judiciary, oversight and ways and means — to continue the ongoing inquiry into whether “sufficient grounds exist” for the lower chamber to impeach the president.
- House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff, D-Calif., is given the authority to schedule public hearings and call witnesses to testify.
- Republicans are allowed to request witnesses and issue subpoenas during the impeachment investigation. However, Schiff and other committee Democrats will have the power to veto Republican requests.
- Schiff and committee ranking member Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., will both be able to question witnesses for up to 90 minutes in total — a change from the usual five minutes. Schiff and Nunes can also designate staffers to question witnesses. Other committee members will have the usual five minutes.
- After the intelligence committee holds public hearings, the panel will write up investigatory findings before handing off the inquiry to the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., which will draft articles of impeachment should the process reach that point.
Welch said he expects public hearings before Thanksgiving. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi told Bloomberg Friday she anticipates a similar timeline.
“I don’t know what the timetable will be — the truth will set us free,” Pelosi said of the schedule once public hearings begin. “We have not made any decisions on if the president will be impeached.”
