House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she believes there is already enough evidence to justify moving forward with the impeachment of President Donald Trump over his Ukraine conduct.
The House is due to vote Thursday on a resolution that formalizes the current impeachment inquiry, setting out its scope and terms. Republican lawmakers had accused Democrats of mishandling the inquiry by not putting it to a vote.
Trump allegedly pressured Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to open potentially damaging and spurious investigations into the Democratic Party and former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading candidate for the 2020 nomination, for his own political benefit.
An edited summary of a July 25 call between Trump and Zelenskiy released by the White House shows the U.S. president asking his counterpart for a "favor" and to open the two investigations.
At the heart of the allegations is the claim that Trump withheld military aid from Ukraine and dangled a potential White House meeting for Zelenskiy as leverage to secure the opening of the investigations and a public announcement of such. Trump denies any wrongdoing.
"When we decide if we are going to go forward, we will be ready, and we will be ironclad," Pelosi, a California Democrat, told The Atlantic, referring to an eventual vote on specific articles of impeachment before the process heads to the Senate for a trial.
Recent testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, which is operating under the umbrella of the impeachment inquiry, appears to corroborate the allegation of a quid pro quo offered by Trump to Zelenskiy for the investigations.
Both Bill Taylor, the most senior U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, and Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, the National Security Council's Ukraine expert, have testified to that effect in the past week.
"I do think we have enough," Pelosi told The Atlantic of the evidence accumulated so far in the impeachment inquiry. "We've had enough for a very long time...but as long as there is corroboration, we might as well get some more. And then we'll see."
The veteran Democrat also spoke gravely about the consequences of not holding Trump to account for his alleged actions towards Ukraine. "If this president were to get away with this, forget about it all," Pelosi told the publication.
"We might as well not even run for office. You don't need this branch of government if he's going to overturn the power of the purse, if he is going to overturn all of the other checks and balances, the power of inquiry."
The White House, which has so far refused to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry, did not respond immediately to Newsweek's request for comment.
