Daniel DePetris

Trump’s impeachment can only go one way – in his favour

After 17 witnesses, weeks of closed-door depositions and public hearings and a lot of heated back-and-forth between the parties, it has all come down to this: the unveiling of the formal articles of impeachment. Early on Tuesday morning, the six Democratic chairs who have been investigating President Trump on everything from obstruction of justice to violations of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause strode up to the podium and delivered a single unifying message—the President of the United States threatens the country’s democracy every day he remains in office.

As House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerry Nadler told the assembled reporters, ‘President Trump violated his oath to the American people. He placed his own private interests ahead of our own national security and the integrity of our elections. Such conduct is clearly impeachable. This Committee will proceed accordingly.’

The 9-page impeachment resolution focuses on two counts: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The former goes to the heart of the impeachment inquiry, where Trump allegedly held $400 million of US military aid to Ukraine and a head-of-state White House visit contingent on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky launching a corruption inquiry against the Bidens. The latter concerns the White House’s order to administration staff to not cooperate with the investigation, an act that some officials in the State Department, the Defense Department, and National Security Council nonetheless defied by showing up for depositions. It was the obstruction of Congress charge that seemed to have captured much of the Democrats’ anger. ‘In the history of the Republic,’ the resolution reads, ‘no President has ever ordered the complete defiance of an impeachment inquiry or sought to obstruct and impede so comprehensively the ability of the House of Representatives to investigate High Crimes and Misdemeanors.’ Even Richard Nixon, the favourite villain in American politics who engaged in one of the most elaborate cover-ups in US political history, wasn’t scolded in such a way.

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Written by
Daniel DePetris

Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities, a syndicated foreign affairs columnist at the Chicago Tribune and a foreign affairs writer for Newsweek.

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