The full House of Representatives is expected to vote Wednesday on whether to impeach President Donald Trump for his contacts with Ukraine, a Democrat leadership aide told NBC News.
The same aide said the House is likely to vote on legislation to fund the government on Tuesday and the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USCMA) on Thursday, but the schedule is not set in stone.
NBC News’ report came after the House Judiciary Committee voted down a pair of Republican amendments to the articles of impeachment against the president.
The votes came as the panel resumed debating the two articles of impeachment ahead of an expected vote on the full chamber floor.
The committee began debating the charges in a marathon session Wednesday, with panel members from both parties arguing for and against their validity. The Democratic-held committee is expected to approve both articles, along party lines, and shift them to the full House for a vote next week.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) introduced an amendment to strike the abuse of power charge, but the panel struck it down 23-17.
“[The charge] ignores the truth. It ignores the facts, It ignores what happened and what has been laid out for the American people over the last three weeks,” Jordan said.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) also introduced an amendment to remove a reference to former Vice President Joe Biden in the articles and instead include his son, Hunter Biden’s name and the Ukrainian company Burisma.
“This amendment strikes the reference of Joe Biden as the center of the proposed investigation and replaces it with the true topic of the investigation, Burisma and Hunter Biden,” Gaetz said. “An essential element of the Democrats’ case on abuse of power is that the Bidens did nothing wrong.”
That amendment, also, was voted down along party lines.
On Tuesday, House Democrat leaders unveiled to articles of impeachment against the president: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) launched a formal impeachment probe after a partisan CIA analyst alleged in a whistleblower complaint that President Trump pressured the leader of Ukraine to look into allegations of corruption against the Bidens in exchange for U.S. military aid. Both President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky deny any pressure was applied and the White House published a transcript of their July 25 call as evidence that no wrongdoing occurred.
Andriy Yermak, a senior Zelensky adviser, confirmed this week that the eastern European country did not believe U.S. military aid was connected to any investigations.
“We never had that feeling,” Yermak told TIME magazine in an interview released Monday. “We had a clear understanding that the aid has been frozen. We honestly said, ‘Okay, that’s bad, what’s going on here.’ We were told that they would figure it out. And after a certain amount of time the aid was unfrozen. We did not have the feeling that this aid was connected to any one specific issue.”
The UPI contributed to this report.