The House of Representatives voted today to approve its first resolution related to their impeachment inquiry into President Trump.
The resolution passed by a vote of 232 to 196, with Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN) and Jeff Van Drew (D-NJ) dissenting from their party to vote no.
Former Republican Rep. Justin Amash (I-MI), who left the party earlier this year, joined Democrats to vote yes.
All current Republicans voted no.
The resolution was a set of procedures proposed by Democratic leaders for how the impeachment inquiry will function going forward.
And this vote paves the way for the next step in the impeachment process.
That process will likely culminate in the House with the drafting of and voting on formal articles of impeachment.
Voting on how to conduct the impeachment inquiry isn’t required by the Constitution, but Democrats are officially turning to a new phase of the inquiry.
The vote follows a week of impeachment news that is catching up to Trump.
Testimony from chief envoy to Ukraine William Taylor, and the National Security Council’s Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and Tim Morrison put into question Trump’s claims of no quid pro quo.
On the House floor, Speaker Nancy Pelosi presided over the vote in an unusually packed chamber, after a debate that was fraught with the weight of the moment.
Pelosi read from the preamble of the Constitution, a picture of the American flag by her side, and declared somberly, “What is at stake in all of this is nothing less than our democracy.”
Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the minority leader, quoted Alexander Hamilton, who warned in the Federalist papers against impeachment as a partisan tool.
Lawmakers listened from their seats, stone-faced and somber, while members of the public watched from the crowded gallery above.
“We don’t know whether President Trump is going to be impeached but the allegations are as serious as it gets: endangering national security for political gain,” Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, the chairman of the House Rules Committee, thundered from the House floor, adding, “History is testing us.”
Minutes after the vote, Stephanie Grisham, the White House press secretary, denounced what she said was “a sham impeachment” and “a blatantly partisan attempt to destroy the president.” In a statement, she added, “The president has done nothing wrong and the Democrats know it.”
Trump weighed in on Twitter: “The Greatest Witch Hunt In American History!”
Practically speaking, the resolution adopted today outlines the rights and procedures that will guide the inquiry, including the public presentation of evidence and how the president and his legal team will be able to eventually mount a defense.
But its significance was more profound: After five weeks of private fact-finding, Democrats signaled that, despite Republican opposition, they now had enough confidence in the severity of the underlying facts about Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, and enough public backing for pursuing their inquiry, to start making their case for impeachment before the American people.
Even as they voted, more revelations about the president’s pressure campaign trickled out, as Timothy Morrison, the top Russia expert on the National Security Council, testified privately four floors below in a secure room in the bowels of the Capitol.
He confirmed that the United States ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, told a top Ukrainian official that security assistance would be withheld until the country committed to investigations, pointing to a quid pro quo at the heart of the impeachment inquiry.
The vote removed almost any doubt that Democrats would bring a full-fledged impeachment case against Trump later this year.