Lawmakers signaled Sunday they believe congressional leaders will reach a deal that will prompt the House of Representatives to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate soon, amid a standoff over the rules and additional witnesses in President Trump’s trial.
“There will be an agreement and the trial will go forward,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, a Democratic candidate for president, who called for witnesses the White House previously blocked to testify. On CNN’s “State of the Union,” she didn’t predict what such a deal would look like but said “I simply know that we have a constitutional duty to take on this very important case.”
On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R., Mo.) said he sees the Senate starting its trial in January, arguing that further delays wouldn’t politically benefit Democrats. He said it wasn’t the Senate’s job to make the impeachment case against Mr. Trump but didn’t rule out more witnesses being called.
The Democratic-controlled House voted last week to impeach Mr. Trump on two articles related to his efforts to pressure Ukraine to launch investigations that could benefit him politically. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) held off on sending the articles to the Republican-controlled Senate before the year-end break, saying she wanted more clarity on the rules for the trial.
Both houses of Congress are now on recess, and Mr. Trump is in Florida until the new year.
Mr. Trump has said he did nothing wrong, and Republicans have said impeachment is driven by Democrats’ animosity toward Mr. Trump. “It’s so unfair. She has no case,” the president said in a speech to activists in Florida Saturday night, referring to Mrs. Pelosi.
Democrats have said they want to call witnesses including acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, former national security adviser John Bolton and Office of Management and Budget official Michael Duffey, in the belief they could shed more light on the Ukraine pressure campaign. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said last week he didn’t plan to allow those witnesses, but Democrats have hoped to pick off some Republicans in the votes to formulate the trial’s rules.
Meanwhile, the White House has indicated it wants to call such witnesses as Hunter Biden, who served as a board member of a Ukrainian energy company while his father, Joe Biden, was vice president. The elder Mr. Biden is a leading Democratic presidential contender, and Mr. Trump’s calling for an investigation of Hunter Biden was said by Democrats in their impeachment case to be an abuse of his office.
Over the weekend, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) reiterated his call for more witnesses, pointing to a newly disclosed email sent by Mr. Duffey on July 25, shortly after a pivotal call by Mr. Trump with Ukraine’s president. In that call, Mr. Trump asked Kyiv to announce investigations of Mr. Biden and allegations related to the 2016 campaign.
In Mr. Duffey’s email, he asked officials to hold off on additional Pentagon obligations of funds for Ukraine, pending the administration’s review of Ukraine aid. The White House froze aid to Ukraine over the summer, before releasing it in September amid bipartisan outcry on Capitol Hill.
“If there was ever an argument that we need Duffey and others to testify & we need the documents we requested—this is it,” tweeted Mr. Schumer on Sunday about the email.
A spokesman for Mr. McConnell said there were no developments since last week, when the senator said talks were at an “impasse.”
Mrs. Pelosi’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Senators on Sunday said the pause in the impeachment process was only a temporary delay.
“Those articles will come over,” said Sen. Cory Booker (D., N.J.), who is also running for president. In comments on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he said that what Mrs. Pelosi is “trying to do is to make sure the best possible case for a fair trial happens.”
Sen. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) said on ABC’s “This Week” that he thinks the Senate won’t hear from witnesses.
“We’ll let both sides have a fair chance at making their case, and then we should take a vote,” he said. “I also think it’d be totally appropriate to have the House put on their case, the president put on his case and then decide what we’re going to do after that.” He called the House’s findings “pretty thin gruel.”
Sen. Doug Jones (D., Ala.) responded on the same show that “if he really believes it’s thin, it’s thin because the president of the United States ordered his top people who were in the room, who have first-hand knowledge, not to testify. He ordered documents not to be turned over.”
Mr. Jones, viewed as among the most vulnerable senators up for re-election in 2020, said he is uncertain as to whether there is enough evidence to remove Mr. Trump from office.
The framework for a Senate trial will largely be negotiated between the White House and Republican leaders in the Senate. Asked what that deal might look like, Marc Short, the chief of staff for Vice President Mike Pence, pointed to the trial for President Bill Clinton in early 1999, in which the White House and House laid out their case, and votes followed on whether to bring witnesses.
In comments on “Meet the Press,” he said Mr. Trump is “open to witnesses,” but that “to the extent that there’s a prolonged trial, we’re not anxious for that.”
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, a high-ranking member of Democratic leadership in the Senate, criticized senators in both parties who have openly declared their plans to vote one way or the other.
“When it comes to saying ‘I made up my mind, it’s all over,’ for goodness’ sake, that’s not what the Constitution envisioned,” he said on “State of the Union.”
—Michael C. Bender and Alexa Corse contributed to this article.
Write to Thomas M. Burton at tom.burton@wsj.com
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