Democrats want to quickly build public support for the charge that Trump brazenly tried to solicit a foreign leader in his reelection effort. To that end, they seemed to get another gift today with the White House’s release of a reconstruction of a call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. According to the text, Trump clearly asked Zelensky to work with his lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr to investigate the Biden family’s activities in Ukraine. Trump’s request for “a favor” comes right after the two men discuss aid to Ukraine and Zelensky’s mention that his government was almost ready to buy weapons from the U.S.

“What these notes reveal is a classic Mafia-like shakedown of a foreign leader,” Representative Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told reporters. “This is how a Mafia boss talks.” Schiff will hold a hearing on Thursday for which Democrats have demanded that the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, turn over a report from a whistle-blower that allegedly involves the president’s actions regarding the Bidens and Ukraine. He said the transcribed notes were “far more damning than I or many others had imagined.”

Yet neither Pelosi’s top lieutenants nor her office would offer any specificity on how fast the impeachment investigation might move, or when it would be done. The House is scheduled to depart for a two-week recess on Friday. “I don’t know what the timeline will look like except that we all feel a sense of urgency here,” Schiff said. Before the Ukraine revelations, Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler had said he hoped the panel could reach a decision by the end of the year, and Raskin predicted, perhaps wishfully, that goal was well within reach. “I have no clairvoyant powers,” he said, “but if I had to bet, I would guess that we’d certainly act before the end of the year.” Khanna hoped for an even faster resolution, saying “before Thanksgiving would be ideal.”

“We can’t drag this out to an election year,” he added.

Still, not everyone is on board with the caucus’s sudden lurch toward impeachment.

Some of the more moderate House Democrats still want to obtain both an actual transcript of the call and the whistle-blower complaint, and see what evidence the various committees can put together before vocally supporting the effort. A groundswell of support from House Democrats this week has put the majority of the caucus on record backing an impeachment investigation, but the party has work left to do in order to get a majority of the House. “There’s not going to be a vote for a while. We’ll see what the Judiciary Committee comes up with,” said an aide to a Democratic member who has yet to come out in favor of the inquiry. The aide was granted anonymity in order to speak candidly.