Today we meet to begin consideration of articles of impeachment against President Donald J. Trump.

Late Wednesday night, Democrats and Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee began an intense debate over two articles of impeachment against the President of the United States,

abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The committee broke overnight and the debate called a markup resumed Thursday morning as the committee headed toward a vote on the final articles of impeachment.

And late Thursday, after hours and hours, an hours of rangerous debate that were expected to end in a vote that night, Chairman Jerry Nabler surprised the room.

Nabler announced that the group would break until Friday morning and finally take a vote then.

And Friday, that vote finally came. The House Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to move the articles of impeachment out of committee and onto the full House.

A full House vote, the vote that has the power to formally impeach President Trump, is expected next week.

So, as we head toward that full House vote, how exactly did we get here? What amendments came out of the markup and what did the wild and unexpectedly long debate process teach us about what's to come next week, and undoubtedly historic week for this country?

This is Can He Do That, a podcast that explores the powers and limitations of the American presidency and what happens when branches of government collide? I'm Allison Michaels.

Politics reporter Colby Iquits has been covering this debate since it ganned Wednesday night. I managed to pull her into the studio of Thursday during a break on the hill. I wanted to ask her about the process we were seeing play out. One that at the time seemed like organized chaos and likely to wrap up soon after we were talking.

The question I want to start with is why does the debate over what's in the articles come after the articles have been drafted?

It's essentially who agreed upon the articles as written before the markup, if not the judiciary committee that's debating it now.

Right, and that's how all legislation works on Capitol Hill. So, you have a group of people, lawmakers and their staff that draft legislation, and then they bring it before the committee, and then the committee votes on it. They can offer amendments to it, and then from the committee goes to the floor.

And so, the same rules applied here with the articles of impeachment, the judiciary staff, the majority staff wrote the articles impeachment, gives the minority a chance to amend it, then it goes to the floor.

Okay, so draft the articles, debate the articles, finalize the articles, vote in the House Judiciary Committee, and on that final version. Right.

Okay, so that debate process, which we saw unfold over the past two days, it's called a markup. Can you tell me more about that process about what exactly a markup is and what its function is?

Right, so different than a hearing. So, a committee has two functions. One is to hold hearings, where you call witnesses in expert witnesses to come in and testify. We saw that in the intelligence committee when numerous people came in to testify about what they knew regarding President Trump and his conversation with the Ukrainian president.

In the judiciary committee, they had one hearing, but they also had a markup. And a markup is when you take the information that you've gleaned from the expert witnesses, put that into a piece of legislation or a resolution, have an open debate about it.

The difference between a markup and other things you see on Capitol Hill is you actually do have an open debate. Republicans, the minority party, can offer as many amendments as they want. They can talk as long as they want about that amendment.

And then they vote at the end of that. So, markups and committees can be hours and hours. They could go into the middle of the night. The markup on the Affordable Care Act during the Obama administration, I think went to like four in the morning or something. So, markups might be the most democratic of all of the things that Congress does because it does give everyone in the committee a voice.

That being said, if you're the minority party, you can offer as many amendments as you want. Chances are they're not going to get added to the underlying resolution or legislation.

To the point of giving everybody a voice, a lot of what we saw over the past day in this markup were things that felt like speeches or monologues. Why is that the choice of a lot of these both Republicans and Democrats in this particular markup?

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