Nadler’s trajectory has grown increasingly clear over the past few months. In July, both a Judiciary subpoena memo and a request in federal court for grand jury materials stated that the Judiciary Committee is working to determine whether it should “recommend articles of impeachment” against the president. As it has been widely reported, one of the benefits of this language is that it improves the committee’s legal standing to obtain evidence it’s seeking in its legal battles with the Trump administration. But the process Nadler has described is not just a legal strategy. The impeachment process, whether House Democrats know and acknowledge it or not, is happening right now.



It’s happening despite protests from Judiciary Committee Republicans, who routinely complain that the course Nadler has set out is illegitimate. “The Judiciary Committee became a giant Instagram filter,” Republican ranking member Doug Collins declared in his opening remarks for Thursday’s session. “The difference between formal impeachment proceedings and what we’re doing today is a world apart no matter what the chairman just said. What we’re looking at here is a filter to make you believe something!” He later asked whether he’d “missed a vote” of the full House officially authorizing an impeachment inquiry.

The Constitution offers no guidelines whatsoever as to how the House pursues an impeachment process.

The Constitution offers no guidelines whatsoever as to how the House pursues an impeachment process, beyond noting that impeachment must begin in the House. Historically, every time the House has initiated the impeachment process, it has gone about it differently. Under Andrew Johnson, the House approved impeachment before articles had even been drafted. After they had been written, the House voted again to approve them and send them to the Senate. Under Richard Nixon, the House voted to authorize a Judiciary investigation and then drafted and approved articles of impeachment. Nixon resigned before things went further. Under Bill Clinton, the House passed a resolution authorizing the Judiciary Committee to conduct an impeachment investigation, but the committee did little to actively probe the revelations of the already released Starr Report. Later, a separate resolution with articles of impeachment was passed by the House.

Now, Nadler’s committee is conducting an investigation that may lead to the drafting of articles upon which the whole House will subsequently vote. Of these varied approaches to impeachment, there are none that can be said to be more constitutionally legitimate than the others. The Constitution does not even require a formal process of any kind to precede the drafting of articles. In fact, articles of impeachment against Trump have already been drafted and voted on multiple times since 2017. Had the House approved them, they would have been sent to the Senate for an impeachment trial—simple as that.