Vote to formalize process is expected to pass along party lines, and public hearings could begin as early as 12 November

Trump impeachment: what is the House voting on and why is it important?

As the House of Representatives prepares to vote Thursday to formalize the impeachment process against Donald Trump, here’s a guide to what to expect today, what’s happened to get us here and what’s coming up next.

What’s happening today?

• For the first time on Thursday, the House will hold a vote on an impeachment-related matter. The vote is not an “impeachment” vote per se but instead a vote on process.

• The US constitution gives the House the sole authority to pursue impeachment but little guidance on how. Democrats have proposed a process that closely follows the Republican process in the 1998 impeachment of Bill Clinton.

• Today’s vote is expected to pass along party lines; pundits will look for defectors. Pursuant to the vote, public, televised hearings could begin as early as 12 November.

• If Trump is impeached by the House, the Senate would then hold a trial in which a two-thirds majority vote against Trump would be required to remove him from office.

• Also on Thursday, congressional investigators will be hearing from their 16th known witness since the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, announced impeachment proceedings on 24 September. Testifying will be Timothy Morrison, the senior director for Russian affairs at the national security council.

• Morrison appears well positioned to testify to the central allegation in the impeachment inquiry, that Trump used the power of his office to solicit foreign intervention in a US election.

• Not only did Morrison listen to a 25 July phone call in which Trump asked the Ukrainian president for a “favor” – Morrison was also party to conversations in which agents for Trump said US military aid for Ukraine was contingent on the Ukrainians manufacturing an investigation of Joe Biden, according to previous testimony.

How did we get here?

• Pelosi announced an impeachment inquiry one day before Congress finally obtained a whistleblower complaint against Trump filed on 12 August. The complaint accuses Trump of “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 US election”.

• Since then, a bipartisan group of congressional investigators has privately deposed witnesses, including current and former officials from the White House, defense department and state department. With one exception, the witnesses appear to have corroborated and expanded on the whistleblower’s complaint.

• The Trump administration has tried to prevent witness testimony and defied subpoenas for documents. The White House has declared a blanket policy of non-participation. But many witnesses have ignored the gag order and testified anyway.

• For a summary of witness testimony so far and a look at other key impeachment events, visit our impeachment timeline.

• Trump has called the process a witch-hunt and attacked the witnesses and investigators. Republicans have called the inquiry a “sham” but have been slow to defend the substance of Trump’s conduct.

• That conduct includes a 25 July phone call between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy in which Trump reminds Zelenskiy that “the United States has been very, very good to Ukraine” and then asks for a “favor” involving Biden. Last month the White house released a partial transcript of the call, which Trump says was “perfect”.

• The conduct also includes the temporary suspension of $391m in US military aid to Ukraine that Congress had voted to deliver. Democrats say the suspension was a clear abuse of power by Trump and a betrayal of US national security in favor of Trump’s political agenda. Trump denies the aid suspension was tied to the Biden ask.

• Alleged misconduct by Trump also includes many scenes in which Trump proxies pressured Ukrainians to announce a Biden investigation, dangling a White House visit or military aid in return. Such scenes played out in a White House meeting in July, a bilateral meeting in Warsaw in September and elsewhere, witnesses have said.

• A key player in those scenes is also the one witness, apparently, so far to have advanced Trump’s assertion that there was no quid pro quo arrangement. He is Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union.

• After originally testifying on 17 October, Sondland, a hotelier and Trump mega-donor, returned with his lawyers to Capitol Hill one week later to “review” his testimony.

• In the interim, diplomat William “Bill” Taylor, the head of the US embassy in Kiev, testified about his concern over an “irregular, informal policy channel” on Ukraine run by Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal emissary, Sondland and others.

What happens next?

• Democrats are moving quickly in an effort to hold public hearings before the Thanksgiving holiday, angling toward an impeachment vote by the end of the year. Democrats would select which previously interviewed witnesses to put on TV, and Republicans could also request witnesses.

• The impact of public hearings on public opinion could be significant. Support for the removal of Richard Nixon from office shot up 10 points after televised hearings began. Americans currently support impeachment by a 48.5-43.5 margin, according to FiveThirtyEight’s tracker.

• In his defense, Trump has asked Republicans to shift from attacking the process to defending his conduct, which he insists was irreproachable. The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, told reporters this week: “Nothing in that phone call is impeachable.”

• Investigators have yet to hear from multiple significant players in the impeachment drama. These include former national security adviser John Bolton, who reportedly referred to the Ukraine quid pro quo as a “drug deal”; cabinet secretaries Rick Perry and Mike Pompeo; budget director and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and NSC lawyer John Eisenberg.

• If Trump is impeached in the House, the Senate trial would most likely begin in early 2020. About 20 Republican senators would need to turn on Trump to remove him from office. So far not one has, publicly.

