“The Senate impeachment rules are very clear,” said McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, in an interview with CNBC.

“The Senate would have to take up an impeachment resolution if it came over from the House.”

Last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, asserting that Trump had used his office for personal political gain in July, when he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading Democratic presidential candidate, and his son Hunter. There is no evidence of wrongdoing by either Joe or Hunter Biden.

A whistleblower’s complaint and a rough transcript of the Trump-Zelensky conversation publicly released last week by the Trump administration have become the basis of the House Democrats’ investigation, which they hope to complete this fall. The Democratic-controlled House needs only a simple majority to pass articles of Trump impeachment, while two-thirds of the Republican-controlled Senate is required to convict and remove the President from office.

On Saturday, a Senate GOP leadership aide told reporters that “there is no way we could somehow bar the doors and prevent the managers from presenting the articles” to the Senate. On CNBC Monday, McConnell made clear that the Senate must consider articles of  Trump impeachment. But he added that the amount of time spent on a trial is “a whole different matter.”

Trump and his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, have charged that Joe Biden urged Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who had previously investigated the owner of an energy company that employed Hunter, and that Joe Biden had threatened to deny the country a $1 billion loan guarantee if it did not. The then-vice president, along with European governments and international institutions, did push for the dismissal of the Ukrainian general prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, charging he was not doing enough to counter corruption in the country.

On July 25, Trump reminded Zelensky that the United States had been “very, very good” to Ukraine and asked him to work with Giuliani and Attorney General Bill Barr to investigate the Bidens, according to a rough transcript of the call released by the White House. A person familiar with Barr’s reaction said he was surprised and angry that his name came up on the call. Barr has never discussed Ukraine with Giuliani, according to the Justice Department.

“There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great,” said Trump on the call. “Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it. … It sounds horrible to me.”

Not long before the call, Trump held up nearly $400 million in US aid to Ukraine. The money was released in September amid bipartisan pressure, including from McConnell, who noted on Monday that he had called Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Mark Esper “wondering what the hang-up was.”

“I was curious as to what the delay was,” McConnell said. “Fortunately the aid was released and I think it was an important step for our Ukrainian friends.”

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Five Republican senators have said they back the measure passed in February by the US House of Representatives, which is controlled by Democrats. At least four Republicans are needed to pass it in the 100-seat Senate, along with all 45 Democrats and two independents.

But the measure is unlikely to become law given that a two-thirds vote of Congress is needed to override a presidential veto, which Trump vowed to issue if it passed the chamber Thursday.

 “I am prepared to veto, if necessary,” Trump said in an early-morning post on Twitter before senators took up the measure, Reuters reported.

Vice President Mike Pence met with Republican senators this week to try to tamp down support for the measure, with some Republicans worried that future Democratic presidents could usurp the power of Congress to fund the government and use the emergency declarations to fund their own pet programs.

Pence told senators that Trump would back a second bill offered by Republican Senator Mike Lee, which would end future emergency declarations after 30 days unless Congress votes to extend them.

Lee said on Wednesday the White House had subsequently made clear his bill did “not have an immediate path forward.” He added he would vote on Thursday to end the emergency declaration.

At stake are billions of dollars in funding for a wall along the US-Mexico border that Trump is demanding but Congress has refused to fully provide. The stalemate led to a 35-day partial government shutdown that ended in January.

Under the emergency declaration Trump signed on Feb. 15, he would take money from other federal programs to build the barrier he says is needed to curb illegal immigration and drug trafficking.

Democrats deny there is an emergency at the border, saying border crossings are at a four-decade low.

Court challenges have also been filed asserting it is Congress, not the president that decides how taxpayer money is spent.

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Introduced by Senators Bernie Sanders, Mike Lee and Chris Murphy, the resolution will scale back the US role in and American military assistance for Saudi war on Yemen ahead of the fourth anniversary of the day when the Saudi-led coalition started its campaign against the impoverished nation.

The text now heads to the Democrat-led House of Representatives, which is expected to overwhelmingly pass the measure, possibly this month.

Bernie Sanders, a co-sponsor of the text, has called the Saudi war on Yemen a humanitarian and strategic disaster.

The resolution sets the foundation for what could become Trump’s first presidential veto, as White House advisers said earlier in the day that Trump would veto the resolution.

The Office of Management and Budget released a formal statement of administration policy that called the resolution “flawed” and suggested it could undermine the president’s role as commander in chief. Advisers would suggest Trump veto the measure, the statement said.

The vote on the war powers resolution will be the second within four months in the Senate.

Supporters of the Yemen resolution have faced a long and grueling road to get the legislation onto the president’s desk. The Senate first passed the measure 56 to 41 in December, but then House Speaker Paul Ryan refused to take up the resolution.

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