House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday said she would send the two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump to the Senate next week.

The move came after weeks of Democrats and Republicans in the upper chamber duking it out over the terms of Trump's impeachment trial.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said this week that he would move forward with a trial without committing to calling witnesses, as Democrats had demanded. Pressure then mounted on Pelosi to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate after several Democrats indicated they wanted to start the trial.

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Friday that she would transmit the two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump to the Senate next week.

Democrats and Republicans in the upper chamber have been duking it out over the terms of Trump's impeachment trial since the House voted last month to impeach the president, charging him with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

Specifically, Democrats wanted Republicans to commit to calling witnesses during Trump's trial and to remain impartial throughout the proceedings.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Trump allies, like Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, had said they were working closely with the White House ahead of the trial and would not act as objective jurors.

Earlier this week, McConnell said he would move forward with the trial without committing to calling witnesses and would instead decide on that question once the trial starts, similar to what happened during Bill Clinton's impeachment in the 1990s.

Following McConnell's announcement, pressure mounted on Pelosi to transmit the articles as several Senate Democrats signaled that they wanted the trial to start.

The two articles of impeachment against the president relate to his efforts to solicit foreign interference in the 2020 election by strong-arming Ukraine into delivering political dirt on one of his 2020 rivals, former Vice President Joe Biden, while Trump withheld vital military aid and a White House meeting that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky desperately wanted.

Trump's actions came to light through a whistleblower complaint that an anonymous US intelligence official filed in August. At the center of the complaint was a July 25 phone call between Trump and Zelensky in which Trump repeatedly pressured Zelensky to investigate the Bidens and look into a bogus conspiracy theory suggesting that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 US election.

The White House released a memo of the phone call that confirmed the whistleblower's main allegation. But subsequent testimony from nonpartisan, career national-security and foreign service officers revealed that the phone call was just one data point in a months-long campaign by Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to force Ukraine to accede to his demands.

Gordon Sondland, the US's ambassador to the European Union, testified that "everyone was in the loop" on Trump's efforts, including the national security adviser John Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, and other top brass at the White House and across federal agencies.