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House Democrats’ effort to impeach President Donald Trump is ramping up as the year winds down, putting the Republican-led Senate on track to hold a trial on the charges against him as the new year begins.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats announced two articles of impeachment on Tuesday, charging Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
They said the House Judiciary Committee plans to meet later this week to consider the articles and make a recommendation to the full House. A vote on impeachment by the full House is then widely expected to come before Christmas.
Don’t miss: Complete MarketWatch coverage of the Trump impeachment inquiry
If a majority of the House votes to impeach Trump, he would become only the third American president to have been impeached formally by Congress, joining Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton. Richard Nixon resigned before such a vote could take place.
Neither Johnson nor Clinton was found guilty in an ensuing impeachment trial in the Senate, and that’s widely expected to happen for Trump, whose party controls 53 of the chamber’s 100 seats. That helps explain why the stock market DJIA, +0.00% SPX, +0.00% hasn’t reacted much to Tuesday’s developments or other impeachment news.
Opinion: Five points every investor ought to consider about the Trump impeachment inquiry
The Senate is getting set to try the president in January, with its legislative calendar for that month cleared for the proceedings. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts would preside over the Senate trial, and Trump would be asked to address the charges.
House Democrats are expected to serve as the prosecutors in the trial, while the president’s lawyers defend him. A two-thirds majority of senators must vote to convict Trump in order to remove him from office.
The Democrats’ impeachment effort centers on Trump’s pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to launch investigations into Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden and his son Hunter, as well as into a theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 presidential election. Pelosi announced the impeachment inquiry on Sept. 24.
“The facts are uncontested,” Pelosi said on Dec. 5. “The president abused his power for his own personal political benefit at the expense of our national security by withholding military aid and a crucial Oval Office meeting in exchange for an announcement of an investigation into his political rival.”
Meanwhile, the manager of the president’s re-election campaign, Brad Parscale, blasted Pelosi and her colleagues on Tuesday after they unveiled the two articles of impeachment.
“For months, Nancy Pelosi said she wouldn’t move forward on impeachment because it was too divisive and it needed bipartisan support,” Parscale said in a statement. “Well, it is divisive and only the Democrats are pushing it, but she’s doing it anyway. Americans don’t agree with this rank partisanship, but Democrats are putting on this political theater because they don’t have a viable candidate for 2020 and they know it.”
Related: Here are the 15 Democrats running for president
Trump’s re-election prospects may be rising as the impeachment efforts escalates, said Capital Alpha Partners analysts in a recent note. New Republican polls show impeachment may be helping Trump’s 2020 campaign in the battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the analysts said.
