-The resolution is adopted without objection.
The motion to reconsider is laid upon the table.
-After weeks and weeks of closed-door depositions,
the House has now voted to formalize
what the rest of the impeachment process will look like.
Here are scenes from inside the chamber today.
-This is a solemn occasion. Nobody --
I doubt anybody in this place, or anybody that you know,
comes to Congress to take the oath of office,
comes to Congress to impeach the president of the United States,
unless his actions
are jeopardizing our honoring our oath of office.
-It's clear that since the Democrats took control
of the House of Representatives,
they have always intended to transform the Intelligence
Committee into the impeachment committee.
Every one of their actions, from the staff they hire
to the Trump conspiracy theories they investigate,
their willful neglect of our basic oversight duties,
demonstrates that this has been their plan from day one.
-I'm here with my colleague Mike DeBonis,
who also covers the Hill.
Mike, this vote, there's a lot in it.
What should the American people take away from it?
I know it also involves a lot of key areas
like public disclosures of the transcripts,
also what public testimony will look like.
What should American people take away from this?
-I think they should take away that this process
is moving forward, it's moving into a new phase.
We're gonna see public hearings
at some point in the near future.
Democrats are making it very clear
that they're taking this process seriously,
that they intend to move forward with it,
and it's a really strong signal that the president
is in really serious, mortal danger of impeachment.
-Now, three committees have been handling
this investigation so far --
Foreign Affairs, Intelligence, Oversight --
but this vote also involves the Judiciary Committee
and how they will be involved in this process.
What is their role, and why is it important?
-Sure, the Judiciary Committee has jurisdiction
over constitutional issues.
Historically they're the committee
that actually writes articles of impeachment.
What this resolution does, it creates a process
for taking the investigative findings
from the other committees,
sending them to the Judiciary Committee,
and preparing those articles of impeachment for the House floor.
-So we've had a lot of closed-door depositions --
about a month's worth of these closed-door depositions.
A few of them have made a lot of news.
Yovanovitch, Fiona Hill, William Taylor.
Do you expect any of those people
to come back to the public phase of this
and perhaps give a public testimony?
-I think it's likely.
I don't think that there's any final decisions at this point.
We've heard from multiple Democrats
who believe that there are numerous people
who have been in these closed-door interviews
who would make very compelling public witnesses.
Bill Taylor, the current US ambassador.
Fiona Hill, the former NSC senior director.
There are others.
And there's the possibility that we could see John Bolton
coming in for a closed-door interview next week.
I know there's a lot of Democrats who think
that he could really be the capstone witness here.
So I don't know that any of the Democrats know
what their exact plan is at this point,
but they believe that they have a lot of good options
to choose from.
-Do you think this vote today -- because procedurally
it doesn't have to happen
in order to continue on with the investigation.
Do you think perhaps last week
when the Republicans tried to storm into the meeting,
if that and other talk of bringing this out
in the public kind of forced the hand of the speaker
and Democrats to do something public today?
-I think it's part of it. They know that that's the thrust
of the Republican criticism has been about the process,
and they've known for a long time
that the president at some point
is gonna have to have an opportunity to plead his case.
And they know that part of this is convincing
the American people that this is an impeachable offense,
it's worthy of this ultimate sanction.
So I think the feeling is that
this was gonna happen sooner or later.
Maybe the Republican protests helped accelerate
that timeline a little bit,
but, you know, there was always going to be a new phase of this,
a more serious phase, and that's what's happening now.
-So I guess the main takeaway of today is,
there is more to come.
-There's more to come, and the American people
are gonna have a lot more to chew on very soon.
They're gonna see some of these witnesses
explain what happened in their own words,
and it remains to be seen
whether that's going to further move public opinion
and create more momentum for impeachment.