'I'm not an impartial juror'

It's Tuesday, OnPolitics readers, meaning it's the calm before the historic impeachment storm. A full House of Representatives vote on whether to impeach President Donald Trump is expected Wednesday or Thursday. In the meantime, we've got some other business to attend to.

Trump impeachment debate

Tuesday was focused on what the future of the impeachment inquiry will look like. Here are the updates from Capitol Hill:

• Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., rejected a proposal raised by Senate Democrats that asked for four key witnesses – including Mick Mulvaney, acting White House chief of staff and John Bolton, former national security advisor – to appear as part of the Senate impeachment trial. "The Senate is meant to act as judge and jury. To hear a trial. Not to re-run the entire fact-finding investigation because angry partisans rushed sloppily through it," McConnell said.
• McConnell declined to answer questions from reporters about the timing of a Senate trial or whether witnesses would be called. But when asked if he would be an impartial juror, he replied, "I'm not an impartial juror. This is a political process. There's not anything judicial about it."
• The House Rules Committee met Tuesday to debate rules for the full House discourse Wednesday on the two articles of impeachment against Trump – abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. 
• Rep. Bradley Byrne, R-Ala., has an amendment out that seeks to note within the articles that if the same standard of obstruction of Congress had applied to former President Barack Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder, they too would have been vulnerable to impeachment for defiance of a lawful subpoena related to the Fast and Furious investigation.

Trump calls Democrats 'deranged,' 'spiteful' in angry letter to Pelosi

Trump slammed the historic impeachment vote expected this week as "spiteful" and "terrible" in a rambling, six-page letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday. Trump accused Democrats of "declaring open war" on democracy with their impeachment drive.

"Any member of Congress who votes in support of impeachment – against every shred of truth, fact, evidence, and legal principle – is showing how deeply they revile the voters and how they detest America's Constitutional order," he wrote.

The president also railed against the impeachment proceedings as a continuation of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, and he accused Democrats of some of the very charges brought against him.

"You are the ones interfering in America's elections. You are the ones subverting America's Democracy. You are the ones Obstructing Justice. You are the ones bringing pain and suffering to our Republican for your own selfish personal, political, and partisan gain," Trump wrote.

Some impeachment leftovers

• Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told Vice President Mike Pence in a letter Tuesday Pence may be "purposefully misleading" Congress about a September conversation between Pence and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
• Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, announced Tuesday he would split his vote on the articles of impeachment. Golden said he would vote for one article – abuse of power – and against the other – obstruction of Congress. 
• Rep. Jeff Van Drew, D-N.J., on Tuesday wouldn't say whether he was planning to abandon the Democratic party and become a Republican after news reports led Democrats in his state to attack him as a coward. Previously, Van Drew, was the lone Democratic congressman to come out against the Trump impeachment.
• A poll released Tuesday by ABC News and The Washington Post found that the majority of Americans think that the president will face a fair trial in the Senate, but that top aides who have not cooperated with House impeachment investigators should be allowed to testify.
• Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Trump "is not a lawyer" after the president asked via Twitter whether the high court could stop the current impeachment proceedings against him.

Judge: FBI misled court when seeking permission to wiretap ex-Trump aide

A secretive court issued a rare public rebuke of the FBI on Tuesday, saying the bureau misled the Justice Department and the court when it sought permission to wiretap a former Trump campaign aide. 

The FBI's handling of the applications to wiretap Carter Page "was antithetical to the heightened duty of candor" expected of the bureau, Judge Rosemary Collyer of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court wrote in a public opinion released Tuesday. 

As part of the FBI's inquiry into Russia's efforts to meddle in the 2016 presidential election, investigators conducted surveillance on Page, whom they believed was conspiring with the Russian government.

The report debunked Trump's claims that the Russia investigation was motivated by political bias. But it revealed a dysfunctional system in which a team of investigators, handpicked to conduct one of the FBI's most sensitive investigations, committed "basic and fundamental errors." 

• FISA: Report on FBI surveillance of Page shows dysfunction, not political bias. That's still a problem.

House approves spending deal that would avert shutdown

The House passed a $1.37 trillion spending package that includes money for Trump's border wall, increasing the age for purchasing tobacco products from 18 to 21 and a deal that offered something for both Democrats and Republicans.

Liberals secured a 3.1% raise for federal workers, upgrades to election systems and $25 million in gun violence research after decades of the gun lobby working against it. 

Republicans were also able to tout $22 billion more in funding for the Pentagon and the preservation of restrictions related to abortion.

The approval Tuesday could avert a government shutdown that would begin Friday, when the government is set to run out of funding. The package will go to the Senate for approval before being sent to Trump for his signature.

Wrapping it up

Let's take a quick look at some other news in the areas of policy, policymakers and what makes the nation's capital tick.

• The Democratic National Committee announced Tuesday that the Democrats' next primary debate would proceed as planned Thursday, after the party stepped in to help arrange a settlement to a labor dispute that had threatened the forum.
• Former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates was sentenced Tuesday to 45 days in jail, a departure from a probation sentence prosecutors said he deserved in exchange for being a key witness in the Russia investigation.
• A group of well-known conservative Trump critics – including the husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, George Conway – have launched a political action committee aimed at stopping Trump's reelection. 
• "The biggest challenge for the Democratic Party this year will be transferring the support of Democratic voters—who have spread their support across different primary front-runners—to the eventual Democratic nominee," pollster David Paleologos writes in an analysis for USA TODAY.

- Until Wednesday, OnPolitics readers