Mohamed Minshawi-Washington

Congressional holiday on Thanksgiving begins next week, and House and Senate members resume work on December 3, and the next steps in the removal of President Donald Trump remain uncertain.

For its part, said the newspaper Politko specialized in Congress affairs that despite the end of two weeks of public hearings with a number of witnesses, most members of the House of Representatives do not know anything about the next step in the investigation.

"It would be good to finish the impeachment investigation before Christmas," said Florida Democrat Val Deming. "It would be the best gift for the American people."

Does Bolton testify?
The ambiguity was further aggravated by the testimony of expert Fiona Hill last Thursday that she had briefed former National Security Adviser John Bolton on everything related to Ukraine, and that he was deeply disturbed by the behavior of President Trump and his close circle, especially the role of Trump's special lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

The testimony could prompt the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee to press Bolton to give public testimony about the impeachment investigation of the president, who remains adamant only if a court decides he must appear before the panel.

President Trump has called on his administration staff not to cooperate in the investigation and to boycott the House requests to appear before the investigation committees, but some of them violated these instructions and presented testimony before the House Intelligence Committee over the past two weeks.

The public hearings, which initially ended on Thursday and lasted two weeks, witnessed the appearance of 12 witnesses who oversaw the file of US-Ukraine relations.

The testimonies revealed that President Trump has already requested that Ukraine open investigations into the involvement of Hunter Biden in corruption cases in exchange for military assistance worth $ 391 million.

It also revealed that President Giuliani's personal attorney, Ruud Giuliani, was responsible for managing Washington's relations with Ukraine away from official circles, and that he was pressuring Ukrainian President-elect Viladomir Zelinsky to open investigations in return for aid and in return for an invitation to visit the White House.

At the same time, the testimonies of US officials left many questions unanswered, the most important of which was what Trump meant in his telephone conversation with the Ukrainian president on July 25.

The source of disagreement at this point is that military assistance has already been provided to Ukraine, without opening any investigation into Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

No one knows what else
The head of the intelligence committee, Adam Schiff, has yet to decide whether the witness hearings are over, or whether there are more hearings.

The Intelligence Committee must submit the final report of the committee to the Judicial Committee, which will be the next and decisive steps in the issue of dismissal of the President in the House of Representatives.

After reviewing the report, the Judicial Committee prepares an indictment to dismiss the president. The 435 council members are then asked to vote on the removal of the president, who needs a simple majority (half plus one vote) to pass.

The House of Representatives is widely expected to pass the resolution, with Democrats having 235 to 200 Republicans, and then submitting the bill to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

McConnell has vowed to deal swiftly with the House decision, and the Senate trial of President Trump will begin, which is expected to take several weeks.

The trial is presided over by the President of the Constitutional Court, Judge John Roberts, and all 100 Senators serving as jurors must vote for or against Trump's removal, a decision that needs a two-thirds majority and cannot be challenged.

The few historical experiences in which Congress has been forced to initiate the impeachment proceedings suggest that they are unreliable, as they relate to privacy and circumstances that cannot be applied in the case of Donald Trump.

On the other hand, the huge polarization between Democrats and Republicans on the issue of isolating the president hinders any common ground on the next steps.