What is the House Judiciary Committee's Next Step?

[tekisui]

The witnesses are calling for Impeachment Hearings, will they come?


All of the charges are now being presented, entered into public record. Does it stop here, or do they call for more hearings?

What happens next?

[Freddie Stubbs]

1. They Chairman may schedule hearings if he so chooses

Or he may not. It is up to him.

[MrCoffee]

2. It's up to Conyers

The most likely course is that the Resolution is referred back to the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

He could schedule a vote on the Resolution by the full Committee, but I think that's pretty unlikely.

[onenote]

3. the next step: its not just up to conyers

As Conyers has pointed out, today's hearing is not an "impeachment" hearing. Judiciary could hold more of these hearings or they could take the next step necessary to initiate a formal impeachment inquiry. To do that, the Judiciary Committee would have to approve and refer to the House a resolution that authorizes and directs the Judiciary Committee to conduct a formal impeachment inquiry and report back to the House with recommendations for articles of impeachment.

A vote in the Judiciary Committee to refer such a resolution to the full House might pass if all of the Democrats on the Committee supported it, but that's a big if. The division in the Committee is 23-17, so if the repubs all vote no, which seems like a safe bet, the resolution would fail if just three Democrats voted no. Given that,even if the resolution made it out of Committee, it would almost certainly fail in the full House (there are easily more than enough blue dogs that would oppose starting a formal impeachment process at this point to defeat the resolution), my bet is that there will be no formal impeachment process.

So Conyers has three choices: do nothing else, schedule more "non-impeachment" hearings, or call for a vote in the Committee on a resolution, that would still have to be approved by the full House, that would give the Committee the authority to commence an impeachment inquiry. As indicated, option three is extremely unlikely.