Page:Impeachment of Donald J. Trump, President of the United States — Report of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives.pdf/70

 When the House wields its constitutional impeachment power, it functions like a grand jury or prosecutor: its job is to figure out what the President did and why he did it, and then to decide whether the President should be charged with impeachable offenses. If the House approves any articles of impeachment, the President is entitled to present a full defense at trial in the Senate. It is thus in the Senate, and not in the House, where the President might properly raise certain protections associated with trials.

Starting in May 2019, the Judiciary Committee undertook an inquiry to determine whether to recommend articles of impeachment against President Trump. The Committee subsequently confirmed, many times, that it was engaged in an impeachment investigation. On June 11, 2019, the full House approved a resolution confirming that the Judiciary Committee possessed "any and all necessary authority under Article I of the Constitution" to continue its investigation; an accompanying Rules Committee Report emphasized that the "purposes" of the inquiry included "whether to approve 'articles of impeachment with respect to the President.'" As the Judiciary Committee continued with its investigation, evidence came to light that President Trump may have grossly abused the power of his office in dealings with Ukraine. At that point, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and the House Oversight and Foreign Affairs Committees, began investigating potential offenses relating to Ukraine. On September 24, 2019, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi directed these committees, as well as the House Judiciary, Financial Services and Ways and Means Committees, to "proceed with their investigations under that umbrella of [an] impeachment inquiry." Finally, on October 31, 2019, the full House approved H. Res. 660, which directed the six committees "to continue their ongoing investigations as part of the existing House of Representatives inquiry into whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to exercise its Constitutional power to impeach Donald John Trump, President of the United States of America."

This approach to investigating potential impeachable offenses adheres to the Constitution, the Rules of the House, and historical practice. House Committees have frequently initiated and made substantial progress in impeachment inquiries before the full House considered a resolution formalizing their efforts. That is what happened in the cases of Presidents Johnson and Nixon, as well as in many