Democratic-controlled House is expected to easily pass both articles of impeachment, but the margin could matter

In March, days before special counsel Robert Mueller concluded his months-long investigation into the ties between Trump campaign associates and Russia, Nancy Pelosi was asked whether she believed the president should be removed from office.

“I’m not for impeachment,” the House speaker told the Washington Post Magazine in an interview published on 11 March.

Did Trump commit a crime? A guide to the impeachment inquiry Read more

“Unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country,” Pelosi continued. “And he’s just not worth it.”

For months Pelosi resisted calls for impeachment from members of her caucus and activists in her party. But then, in late September, Congress was informed of a whistleblower complaint detailing Donald Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate former vice-president Joe Biden, the leading Democratic presidential candidate in 2020. In a matter of days, she dropped her objections and launched a formal impeachment inquiry.

Pelosi’s evolution from holdout to leader in the process has pushed a president to the brink of impeachment for only the third time in US history.

With the House poised to vote this week, impeaching the 45th president of the United States for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress is a legacy-defining moment for a speaker whose career has already had many.

“In the dark days of the revolution, Thomas Paine said, ‘The times have found us,’” Pelosi said. “We think the times have found us now.”

The outcome is all-but assured. The Democratic-controlled House is expected to easily pass both articles of impeachment. But the margin could matter.

While public support for impeachment has climbed since September, polling indicates that support for it remains below 50%. Democrats who break from the party could help bolster Republicans’ claim that opposition to impeachment is bipartisan. They could also harm some of the so-called “frontline” Democrats who are risking their political future by supporting Trump’s removal from office.

Q&A How do you impeach the US president? Show Hide Article 1 of the United States constitution gives the House of Representatives the sole power to initiate impeachment and the Senate the sole power to try impeachments of the president. A president can be impeached if they are judged to have committed "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors" – although the US Constitution does not specify what “high crimes and misdemeanors” are.

The formal process starts with the House of Representatives passing articles of impeachment, the equivalent of congressional charges. According to arcane Senate rules, after the House notifies the Senate that impeachment managers have been selected, the secretary of the Senate, Julie Adams, tells the House that the Senate is ready to receive the articles. Then impeachment managers appear before the Senate to “exhibit” the articles, and the Senate confirms it will consider the case. The presiding officer of the Senate notifies the supreme court chief justice, John Roberts, of the impending trial. Roberts arrives in the Senate to administer an oath to members. The presiding officer will then administer this oath to senators: “I solemnly swear that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of Donald Trump, now pending, I will do impartial justice according to the constitution and laws, so help me God.” The Senate must vote on a resolution laying out ground rules for the trial including who the key players will be, how long they will get to present their cases and other matters. After the Senate is “organized”, the rules decree, “a writ of summons shall issue to the person impeached, reciting said articles, and notifying him to appear before the Senate upon a day and at a place to be fixed by the Senate”. A president has never appeared at his own impeachment trial. Trump will be represented by the White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, and his personal lawyer Jay Sekulow, among others. After the oath, the trial proper will begin. Senators may not speak during the proceedings but may submit written questions. The question of witnesses and other matters would be decided on the fly by majority vote. A time limit for the proceedings will be established in the initial Senate vote. The senators will then deliberate on the case. In the past this has happened behind closed doors and out of public view. The senators vote separately on the two articles of impeachment – the first charging Trump with abuse of power, the second charging him with obstruction of Congress. A two-thirds majority of present senators – 67 ayes if everyone votes – on either article would be enough to convict Trump and remove him from office. But that would require about 20 Republicans defections and is unlikely. The more likely outcome is a Trump acquittal, at which point the process is concluded. Two presidents have previously been impeached, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Andrew Johnson in 1868, though neither was removed from office as a result. Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 before there was a formal vote to impeach him. Tom McCarthy in New York

“This is a vote that people will have to come to their own conclusion on,” Pelosi told reporters. “The facts are irrefutable.”

She said her leadership team will not “whip” the vote, meaning members will not be pressured to stand with the party. She declined to say how many Democrats might vote against the articles of impeachment.

Privately Democrats estimate that they could lose between two to half a dozen. By contrast, Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, has predicted his party will remain united in opposition to articles of impeachment.

Not a single House Republican voted for a resolution outlining the next stage of the impeachment proceedings. Two Democrats broke from their party, a rhetorical gift to Republicans who touted “bipartisan opposition” to the investigation.

“It’s a very sad thing for our country but it seems to be very good for me politically,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Friday, moments after the House judiciary committee approved the articles of impeachment on a party-line vote.

Pelosi has insisted that she never wanted to impeach the president. She was in Congress during the impeachment of Bill Clinton, when the then House speaker, Newt Gingrich, resigned after wrongly predicting that the effort would help Republicans during the 1998 congressional midterm elections. During Pelosi’s first tenure as speaker, she resisted calls from her party to impeach George W Bush over the Iraq war. She managed a similar approach with Trump throughout the Mueller investigation.

She warned that Trump was “goading” Democrats into a divisive impeachment investigation. As talk of impeachment intensified, she insisted that she would rather see Trump “in prison” than impeached. But Trump, she said, left Congress “no choice”.

“The facts of the Ukraine situation,” she said, explaining her transformation on impeachment. “It just changed everything.”

Despite her initial reluctance to impeach, which angered some corners of her caucus, she has largely earned their praise for her “expeditious” and “deliberate” handling of the proceedings.

Pelosi has maintained tight control over the impeachment process. She decided with her lieutenants to keep the articles of impeachment narrowly focused on Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, rather than to charge him with a third article of impeachment for obstruction of justice based on the evidence uncovered during the course of the Mueller investigation. The effect, Trump said recently, is an “impeachment-lite”. But Democratic leaders believe it will help protect the party’s most vulnerable members, who only came out in support of an impeachment inquiry after Trump’s dealings with Ukraine were revealed.

In recent weeks, she has displayed rare flashes of frustration when pressed on the motives behind her leap on impeachment. “Don’t mess with me,” she told a reporter who asked if she hated the president.

“He is the one who is dividing the country on this,” she said, referring to Trump. “We are honoring the constitution of the United States.”

Last week, less than an hour after she formally accused Trump of “high crimes and misdemeanors”, Pelosi announced that congressional negotiators had reached a trade agreement with the administration, a top campaign promise for the president.

“We certainly wouldn’t miss any opportunities because of the present occupant in the White House,” Pelosi said at the Politico’s Women Rule Summit last week. Matter-of-factly, she added: “It’s just not worth it, in my view.”