Speaker Nancy Pelosi opened a formal impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. | Alex Wong/Getty Images Congress ‘Betrayal of his oath of office’: Pelosi opens impeachment inquiry The speaker said that Trump 'must be held accountable.'

Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday formally threw her support behind an impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump, a dramatic move that puts the House on a trajectory to vote to remove the president from office later this fall.

"Today, I'm announcing the House of Representatives is moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry," Pelosi said in a statement outside her office on the second floor of the Capitol. "The actions of the Trump presidency revealed dishonorable facts of the president's betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections."


Pelosi's announcement capped months of Democratic infighting over whether to support efforts to oust Trump and represents the biggest gamble of her long career. The battle over impeaching Trump is likely to drag into the 2020 presidential campaign and become the biggest issue in key House districts.

Trump and top Republicans dismissed the inquiry as a political stunt designed to damage the president's reelection campaign next year, and GOP operatives note recent polls show most Americans don't want to impeach Trump despite viewing his presidency unfavorably. Trump's reelection campaign began fundraising off Pelosi's announcement just minutes after her news conference.

"Democrats can't beat President Trump on his policies or stellar record of accomplishments, so they're trying to turn a Joe Biden scandal into a Trump problem," Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement. "The misguided Democratic impeachment strategy is meant to appease their rabid, extreme, leftist base, but will only serve to embolden and energize President Trump's supporters and create a landslide victory for the president."

But Democratic outrage over Trump's alleged threat to cut off U.S. military aid to Ukraine unless officials there launched an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son persuaded House Democrats from across the party’s ideological spectrum to back an inquiry. Dozens of centrist and moderate Democrats have come out in support of impeachment during the past 72 hours, persuading Pelosi and other top party leaders to back the effort.

Leaving a two-hour closed-door caucus meeting, Pelosi told reporters the Ukraine controversy is a "sea change" for her. Earlier in the day, Pelosi spoke on the phone with Trump. The conversation was initially about gun control but veered into other topics, including Trump urging the Ukrainian president to investigate the Bidens.

Pelosi told lawmakers that Trump said he had nothing to do with blocking the whistleblower complaint to which the speaker told him to "undo it," according to sources in the room.

In fact, the White House is preparing to release to Congress by the end of the week both the whistleblower complaint and the inspector general report, according to a senior administration official, reversing its position after withholding the documents from lawmakers.

“The president of the United States admitted that he spoke to the president of a foreign country — that would be Ukraine — about something that would assist him in his election, Pelosi told reporters later. "So that has changed everything.”

In a separate closed-door meeting earlier in the afternoon, Pelosi told six key committee leaders to compile their arguments for impeachment and send them to the House Judiciary Committee, which will then review and package them together before deciding whether to send an impeachment recommendation to the House floor, according to multiple lawmakers and aides.

“The other committees are going to act under an umbrella of a formal inquiry,” House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal said, confirming the caucus' strategy. “The emphasis is on the term ‘inquiry.’"

Several Democrats said there is no clear timeline for committees to submit the evidence to the Judiciary panel or how to proceed, fueling fears that this is an attempt by leadership to slow the process.

Pelosi shifted from her monthslong effort to contain the push for impeachment in the face of the startling new charges of abuse of power by Trump. Pelosi, however, did not back creation of a select committee of lawmakers to centralize the impeachment probe and pluck it from the jurisdiction of the House Judiciary Committee — a demand made by some moderate Democrats.

Pelosi has previously expressed support for House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler's probe, which the chamber termed an "impeachment investigation" in a July legal filing that Pelosi OK's.

The House will also take up a resolution Wednesday condemning Trump's alleged attempts to pressure Ukrainian officials. The resolution won't call for Trump's impeachment, although it could become the basis for such proceedings.

New Window INTERACTIVE: See which House lawmakers support impeachment

Still, not all Democrats are happy with the strategy. Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, one of seven vulnerable freshman Democrats who backed impeachment hearings in a Washington Post op-ed Monday night, blasted the game plan in the caucus meeting.

“We came out [for an inquiry] because this is something different. This meeting did not give me confidence that this will be something different,” Slotkin said, according to sources in the room. “If you are asking us to stay on message, give us a goddamn message to stay on.”

The speed at which the Ukraine scandal has unfolded has stunned lawmakers on both sides of the Capitol. Yet it was clear by Monday — when a large bloc of "frontline" Democratic freshmen from swing districts came out in support of an impeachment inquiry — that the momentum was building for the effort.

"I truly believe the time to begin impeachment proceedings against this president has come," said Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a revered figure in the caucus and a Pelosi ally whose blessing was seen as a signal that House leaders were on board. Lewis said after his remarks that he talked to Pelosi before announcing his decision.

By Tuesday morning, the number of Democrats publicly backing impeachment proceedings surged to two-thirds of the caucus, with more poised to join by the end of the day. That includes a sharply climbing number of Democrats considered vulnerable in 2020. By Tuesday afternoon, more than half of the 44 "frontline" Democrats — considered the party's most vulnerable incumbents — had voiced support for impeachment proceedings.

"Having taken an oath of office before God and my fellow citizens to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, I can only conclude that Congress move forward with articles of impeachment," said Rep. Antonio Delgado of New York, one of the vulnerable Democrats.

Though impeachment seemed unlikely as recently as last week, Democrats were pushed to the brink amid reports that Trump used the leverage of his office to pressure Ukraine’s president to interfere in the 2020 U.S. presidential election by investigating Biden and his son Hunter, who served on the board of a Ukrainian energy firm.

Trump has acknowledged that on a July 25 call with Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, he encouraged the recently elected leader to probe the former vice president's involvement in the ouster of a Ukrainian prosecutor who was seen by the international community as corrupt. But Trump allies have claimed with no evidence that Biden might have acted to protect Hunter Biden.

Democrats say Trump's open solicitation of assistance in the 2020 election from a foreign leader — especially one reliant on U.S. aid amid an ongoing military struggle against a Russian incursion in eastern Ukraine — is a grave abuse of power. Also outraging the party: Trump has blocked a whistleblower complaint reportedly involving his actions toward Ukraine from reaching Congress, despite laws requiring it to be shared with intelligence committees.

Democratic leaders now view a House Intelligence Committee hearing on Thursday featuring Trump's top intelligence official — as well as a deadline that day for the State Department to turn over related documents potentially implicating the president and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani — as key points in the impeachment proceedings.

Pelosi has been coming under increasing pressure to embrace impeachment as freshman Democrats in swing districts rethink their stances after Trump’s alleged attempt to pressure Ukrainian officials in an effort to tarnish the former vice president, the frontrunner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

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Nadler — who has been criticized by Pelosi and some other Democrats for his handling of the panel's impeachment inquiry — declined to answer questions about the timeline or process for the newly elevated probe.

"Full speed ahead!" Nadler told reporters after a closed-door meeting of all House Democrats on Tuesday. Nadler's control of the impeachment inquiry was affirmed by Pelosi during the session. Yet the Judiciary Committee has struggled to sustain momentum for impeachment efforts.

Judiciary Committee Democrats have at times expressed frustration about the constraints they've faced from House leaders. Pelosi had refused to publicly characterize the committee's probe as an "impeachment investigation" up until this point, muddling the House's message as members struggled to define what they were doing.

The rise of the Ukraine issue as the tipping point for impeachment efforts is a whiplash-inducing turn after Democrats failed to garner public support for such a move in the wake of former special counsel Robert Mueller's report about the Trump campaign's welcoming of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Mueller portrayed a campaign eager to benefit from Russia's malign activity and a president eager to thwart the investigation of his allies — providing evidence of potential instances of obstruction of justice.

But Mueller's report and his public testimony in late July failed to galvanize public sentiment, even as a steady stream of Democrats cited his work to endorse impeachment proceedings.

Andrew Desiderio and Sarah Ferris contributed to this report.