House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday she now supports an “official” inquiry, but nothing changed other than the political momentum for impeachment. The same committees investigating all things Trump are doing what they were doing before her statement. Mrs. Pelosi seems to think something is “official” merely because she deems it so.
This isn’t how impeachment worked against Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. In those cases the full House voted to authorize the Judiciary Committee to investigate if impeachment was warranted.
On Feb. 4, 1974, Democratic House leaders introduced H.Res. 803 authorizing Judiciary “to investigate fully and completely whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to impeach President Richard M. Nixon,” according to the Congress.gov summary. The vote in favor was 410-4. The bipartisan support gave the inquiry more than partisan legitimacy, and six months later Nixon resigned after tapes were released finding he had ordered the coverup of the Watergate break-in.
