With Wednesday night’s vote, House Democrats have impeached President Donald Trump and put the Republican-led Senate on track to hold a trial on the charges against him as the new year begins.

But the exact timing of the Senate trial now looks in doubt, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has signaled that she and her colleagues could delay transmitting the articles of impeachment to the Senate.

Her comments indicating a delay have come after the House voted Wednesday night almost completely along party lines in favor of two articles of impeachment against Trump. The two articles, approved last Friday by the House Judiciary Committee, charge Trump with abuse of power and obstructing Congress.

See:Trump impeached in historic House vote

Trump has 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.

Don’t miss:Complete MarketWatch coverage of the Trump impeachment inquiry

But impeachment by the House doesn’t mean removal from office. Neither Johnson nor Clinton was found guilty in an ensuing impeachment trial in the Senate, and that’s expected to be the same for Trump, whose Republican Party controls 53 of the chamber’s 100 seats. That helps explain why the stock market DJIA, +1.33% SPX, +1.59% hasn’t reacted much lately to impeachment-related developments.

“We all know how it’s going to end,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican, told Fox News last week. “There is no chance the president is going to be removed from office. My hope is that there won’t be a single Republican who votes for either of these articles of impeachment.”

Opinion:For the stock market, impeachment is just a sideshow

And read:Why investors are so calm about impeachment — and what it would take for that to change

The Senate has been getting ready to try the president in January, with its legislative calendar for that month cleared for the proceedings. Chief Justice John Roberts is expected to preside over the Senate trial, and Trump is expected to be asked to address the charges. House Democrats are set to serve as the prosecutors in the trial, and in this role are called impeachment managers, 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. McConnell on Tuesday rejected a request from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat, for new witnesses and documents in the upcoming Senate trial, saying it was up to the House to build the case against Trump.

McConnell’s recent comments have drawn criticism from Democratic lawmakers and sparked some expectations for a delay. After Wednesday’s vote, Pelosi declined to say when the impeachment articles will get transmitted to start the Senate trial, saying Democrats “haven’t seen anything that looks fair to us” in the Senate’s process.

In a Washington Post op-ed earlier this week, a Harvard law professor, Laurence Tribe, called for Pelosi and her colleagues to consider holding off for the time being on transmitting the articles because McConnell has “announced his intention to conduct not a real trial but a whitewash.” This move could strengthen Schumer’s hand in bargaining over trial rules, according to Tribe.

McConnell on Thursday showed no signs he was willing to give ground to Democrats on the trial, saying the potential delay indicates Democratic lawmakers “may be too afraid” to “transmit their shoddy work product to the Senate.” He again rebuffed the request from Democrats that witnesses be called during the Senate trial.

Pelosi on Thursday continued to suggest that a transmission wasn’t imminent.

“The next thing for us will be when we see the process that is set forth in the Senate. Then we’ll know the number of managers that we may have to go forward, and who we would choose,” she said at a news conference.

“In any event, we’re ready. When we see what they have, we’ll know who and how many we will send over. That’s all I’m going to say about that now.”

Trump, for his part, complained on Thursday about the Democrats’ maneuvering and called for a trial right away.

“So after the Democrats gave me no Due Process in the House, no lawyers, no witnesses, no nothing, they now want to tell the Senate how to run their trial,” the president said in a tweet.

“Actually, they have zero proof of anything, they will never even show up. They want out. I want an immediate trial!”

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.”

Trump has repeatedly blasted Democratic lawmakers for their push to remove him from office, with one attack coming in a fiery letter to Pelosi on Tuesday.

“By proceeding with your invalid impeachment, you are violating your oaths of office, you are breaking your allegiance to the Constitution, and you are declaring open war on American Democracy,” the six-page letter said.

“More due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials,” Trump also wrote.

The president’s re-election prospects may be rising as the impeachment effort 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.

Related:Here are the 15 Democrats running for president

A RealClearPolitics moving average of polls as of Thursday showed 48% of Americans oppose Trump’s impeachment, while 47.2% support it.

See:How support for impeaching Trump has risen and fallen — in one chart

This is an updated version of a report first published on Dec. 10, 2019.