But Democrats said that, too, was fallacious, noting that Mr. Trump allowed the aid to be delivered only after he had been briefed about the whistle-blower complaint. The security assistance funds were released “because the president got caught,” said Representative Val Demings, Democrat of Florida. She insisted that lawmakers ought not to be persuaded by the fact that Mr. Trump never explicitly said he was tying official acts to political favors.
“I can tell you this,” said Ms. Demings, a former police chief, “when a robber points a gun at you to take their money, they usually don’t walk up and say. ‘I’m robbing you.’”
Despite the seriousness of the proceedings, the debate took turns for the tawdry and personal. Around noon, Mr. Gaetz proposed an amendment highlighting unproven corruption allegations around Hunter Biden, the former vice president’s son, and proceeded to read aloud from a news article graphically describing the younger Mr. Biden’s history of substance abuse. Democrats shook their heads and one of them, Mr. Johnson of Georgia, offered a word of caution to Mr. Gaetz with a veiled reference to the Florida Republican’s own past arrest for driving under the influence.
“The pot calling the kettle black is not something we should do,” Mr. Johnson said.
Very little about Thursday’s debate was a surprise. Since Ms. Pelosi announced the impeachment inquiry in September, it has moved not just with remarkable speed — 79 days as of Thursday — but with uncanny predictability.
Though several House Republicans flirted with openly criticizing Mr. Trump after the transcript of a July phone call between Mr. Trump and Ukraine’s president became public, they quickly fell into line as the president and his most vocal allies on Capitol Hill systematically attacked the Democratic inquiry.
By Halloween, when Democrats sought a vote to move the inquiry forward on the House floor, tribal politics had prevailed: Not a single Republican joined the Democrats to endorse the process moving forward.
Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting.