Putting on final touches......

House Democrats putting final touches on articles of impeachment

The Judiciary Committee is expected to approve two articles of impeachment against Trump later on Thursday.

By ANDREW DESIDERIO and KYLE CHENEY

The impeachment of President Donald Trump is about to reach the House floor.

Democrats are slated to put the finishing touches on articles of impeachment Thursday, while fending off last-ditch efforts by Republicans to derail them before a final floor vote expected next week.

The Judiciary Committee’s imminent approval of two articles of impeachment — one charging Trump with abuse of power, the other with obstructing congressional investigations — will mark just the fourth time in history the impeachment process has advanced this far.

Democrats expect to approve both articles in the committee and on the House floor, almost assuredly along party lines, and the Senate will follow with a trial in January.

The committee began formally debating the articles late Wednesday night, with lawmakers making direct appeals to their colleagues across the aisle — though both sides remain entrenched.

“When his time has passed, when his grip on our politics is gone, when our country returns, as surely it will, to calmer times and stronger leadership, history will look back on our actions here today,” said Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.). “How would you be remembered?”

But Nadler’s appeal isn’t likely to go anywhere. Republican leaders have been working intensely to prevent any of their rank-and-file colleagues from joining Democrats in favor of impeachment, and so far they’re confident they’ve succeeded.

Republicans used their time during Thursday's hearing to offer amendments to strike various aspects of Democrats' articles of impeachment and accuse the majority of procedural violations. An amendment offered by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), for example, would have eliminated the "abuse of power" article.

A nearly three-month investigation by the House Intelligence Committee produced a 300-page Democrat-authored report alleging that Trump abused his power by pressing Ukraine to investigate his political rivals on discredited charges. The report also describes an alleged effort by Trump to withhold critical military aid and a coveted White House meeting in order to further pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to announce investigations, including one targeting former Vice President Joe Biden.

Trump has mounted an unprecedented effort to stonewall Democrats’ inquiries, ordering all White House officials to defy document and testimony requests — even subpoenas — ensuring that Democrats were unable to question some of the central figures in the allegations against the president.

Democrats have framed the committee vote as an urgent and necessary decision to protect democracy from a president exhibiting autocratic tendencies and trying to warp the institutions of government to his own personal benefit. Republicans, though, say Democrats’ case is based on a thin record of evidence, as well as conjecture and hearsay, and that impeaching Trump would pave the way for partisan impeachments of future presidents.

“After they did all this [investigating], this is all they could come up with?” Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, the Judiciary Committee’s top Republican, said Wednesday night. “It’s been three years to get to here and this is all they got.”

Thursday's markup began with some procedural jousting, as Democrats voted down a GOP effort to hold a "minority hearing day" to call their own set of witnesses before articles of impeachment were voted out of the committee.

Nadler said the Republicans' demand for the hearing day could not be used to delay final consideration of the articles of impeachment, leading Collins to blast Nadler's decision as "the death of minority rights" in the committee and a "crushing blow" that would resonate far into the future.

Democrats also offered a minor amendment to the articles of impeachment to refer to "Donald John Trump" rather than "Donald J. Trump."

Much of the hearing was laden with a historical debate over the standards set in the last two presidential impeachment processes — those facing Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon, who resigned just before the House voted on articles of impeachment.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), who was a committee staffer during the Nixon impeachment and a member of Congress during the Clinton impeachment, said the bulk of witness testimony occurred outside of the Judiciary Committee, which primarily handled the constitutional arguments for impeachment.