“It is impossible for judiciary members to sift through thousands and thousands of pages in any meaningful way in a matter of hours,” Mr. Collins said in a statement, noting that Republicans had been demanding access to the documents for weeks.

Mr. Collins was referring to information sent from the House Intelligence Committee, which produced an investigative report after spending two months examining the president’s actions related to Ukraine, and two other committees.

In a letter Friday night, the leaders of the committees wrote that flash drives sent to lawmakers contained “materials and records already released publicly, other records cited in the report, and certain sensitive materials.”

There was no immediate response from Mr. Nadler who has made no pretense about how he expects the debate to conclude.

“The Framers worst nightmare is what we are facing in this very moment,” he said on Twitter on Saturday as the Judiciary Committee report about the history of impeachment was released. “President Trump abused his power, betrayed our national security, and corrupted our elections, all for personal gain. The Constitution details only one remedy for this misconduct: impeachment.”

The report — which echoes a well-regarded 1974 document created by the same committee during the debate about whether to impeach President Richard M. Nixon — is an attempt to provide Democratic lawmakers with the constitutional rationale to support impeaching a president for only the third time in American history.

Both the 1974 report and the new one trace the origins of impeachment from monarchical England, where it was developed to hold the king’s ministers to account, to colonial America, where the framers of the Constitution believed it was a necessary remedy to ensure that the leaders of the new republic did not corrupt it for their personal benefit.