The US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee on Tuesday said that President Donald Trump’s impeachment hearing will be scheduled for December 4, starting a new phase of the inquiry that could lead to formal charges against the president within weeks.

Trump is not required to attend the hearing. But the move allows the president and his legal team access to congressional impeachment procedures that he and other Republicans have denounced as unfair, partly because the White House has not been able to call or cross-examine witnesses.

“The committee looks forward to your participation in the impeachment inquiry as the committee fulfils its constitutional duties,” Nadler said in a letter to Trump.

The hearings will address “the historical and constitutional basis of impeachment,” and “whether your alleged actions warrant the House’s exercising its authority to adopt articles of impeachment,” he added.

House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff presided over two weeks of dramatic public hearings that he said uncovered a “massive amount of evidence” despite efforts to obstruct the investigation by Trump and his administration.

Schiff said the evidence “conclusively shows” that Trump conditioned a White House meeting with Ukraine’s new president and critical US military assistance on Kiev announcing investigations that would help Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign.

Last week, David Holmes, a staffer from the US Embassy in Ukraine, who also testified described a conversation he overheard between Trump and US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, which occurred on July 26, a day after a Trump-Zelensky phone call that triggered an anonymous whistleblower complaint and the impeachment inquiry.

Initially, President Trump described the impeachment probe against him as “witch hunt”, saying he was “too busy” to watch it.

In October, President Trump opposed impeachment enquiry, saying that there should be no public hearings during the House of Representatives’ impeachment enquiry against him, and directed White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney not to appear before the committees investigating Trump’s phone call to Ukraine.

Late September, the impeachment inquiry, which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi initiated over a complaint by an anonymous whistleblower, is looking into White House’s alleged efforts to withhold military aid to have Ukraine investigate a Trump’s political rival, Joe Biden.