Serious doubts also remain that Pelosi’s posturing will change the legal state of play. Several lawmakers pointed out that Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler has already described his panel’s inquiry as an impeachment investigation.

Several House officials mentioned that Pelosi had signed off on previous Judiciary Committee legal action informing the courts the House was, essentially, in the midst of an impeachment investigation already. Those declarations were in part aimed at elevating the legal standing of the committee’s efforts to enforce subpoenas and other demands for information and witness testimony the Trump administration has refused to provide.

Earlier this month, Nadler’s committee even adopted special impeachment-related hearing rules for witness testimony.

Internal Democratic tensions almost flared publicly earlier in the day with word from some House leadership officials that creation of a special select committee was being considered to carry the impeachment ball, rather than the Judiciary Committee. But that was met with stiff opposition from some members who sit on that committee and others. The idea was declared dead by late afternoon.

Watershed Moment
Still, the buildup to Pelosi’s announcement on Tuesday had the sense of a watershed moment for Democrats, with a string of lawmakers from politically vulnerable districts for the first time backing the notion of impeachment. Biden himself endorsed an impeachment effort if the White House continued to stonewall congressional investigations, telling reporters in Delaware that Trump abused his power and violated his oath of office.

Biden’s decision to abandon his previously cautious approach to impeachment comes as Republicans have sought to highlight his role in the Ukraine controversy to damage his candidacy.

Trump has alleged – and asked Ukraine to investigate – that Biden pressured Ukraine to fire its prosecutor general in 2016 in order to stop an investigation of Burisma Holdings. His son Hunter Biden served on the board.

Biden did demand the ouster of Ukraine’s top prosecutor for corruption, but did so after an interagency policy group in the Obama administration decided that the prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, was engaging in blatantly corrupt behavior. Former administration officials said Biden did not exert particular pressure on that policy process, and Shokin’s top deputy, Vitaliy Kasko, told Bloomberg News that the investigation into Burisma had been dormant for more than a year before Biden raised his corruption concerns.

On Tuesday, Trump lawyerGiuliani -- whose efforts to encourage Ukraine to target the Bidens are already under congressional inquiry -- tweeted without substantiation that he had video evidence of “criminality in Ukraine.”

“They should look at their own backyard and they are going to find criminality that is going to shock the world,” Giuliani told reporters later in the day. “The person damaged most by this is going to be Joe Biden, because he has been caught in a very major scandal.”