Brief Analysis of the Presidential Impeachment Inquiry

After a grueling two-year Russian interference investigation that almost derailed Trump’s presidency, we have kicked off the start of the Fall semester with a fresh set of facts and accusations that have led to an official impeachment inquiry into the President of the United States. This time, all roads lead to Russia’s neighbor, Ukraine. A whistleblower complaint came out that detailed multiple wrongdoings of the president on a call with President Zelensky of Ukraine. We learned that Trump was looking for dirt on former VP Joe Biden, who is a top candidate in the 2020 Democratic presidential bid.

It is alleged that Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Guliani set up shadow diplomacy in order to pressure Ukrainian officials to investigate Biden and his son’s potential corruption and revive a debunked conspiracy theory about the 2016 election. While it is illegal to seek foreign help in an investigation against a political opponent, which Trump admitted to on national television, it has also been recently confirmed by Trump’s acting Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney, that about $400 million of aid to Ukraine was withheld in order to pressure Ukraine to investigate Biden. 

This is what is known as a quid pro quo, when a favor is requested in return for something else, a classic case of political corruption. Naturally, Mulvaney has attempted to walk back his comments, but we are now witnessing cracks in Trump’s support with some GOP members and Fox News reporters beginning to distance themselves and question the president’s actions. The aid to Ukraine was finally released after months of delay only two days after the call happened with Zelensky where Trump urged him to investigate Biden eight times. 

The White House stored the transcript of the call in an electronic server normally used for sensitive, classified information and did not originally disclose who was on the call. It was later understood that Secretary of State Pompeo was on it, with several others who had firsthand knowledge of the call, prompting a second whistle-blower to come forward. 

There have already been several critical witness testimonies including U.S. special representative for Ukraine, Kurt Volker, who resigned the day after the first whistle-blower complaint was released. There was also Marie Yovanovitch, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Fiona Hill, former senior director for European and Russian affairs on Trump’s National Security Council, another senior U.S. diplomat, a former adviser to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and major Trump campaign donor/U.S. ambassador to the European Union, George Sondland.

 Several facts have come out from these testimonies including the release of damning texts between the envoy and a US ambassador and a US diplomat. Yovanovitch alleges that Trump pressured the State Department for several months to oust her from her position in Ukraine for no credible reason, which ultimately occurred in early May. 

This also led to Pompeo’s advisor, Michael McKinley, to resign over the State Department’s unwillingness to defend Yovanovitch. Fiona Hill, gave a scathing testimony in which she witnessed “wrongdoing” in US policy with Ukraine and was urged by then National Security Advisor, John Bolton, to report the incidents to National Security Council lawyer, John Eisenburg. Hill quoted Bolton saying, "Giuliani's a hand grenade that's going to blow us all up," after learning of the alleged shadow diplomacy. 

Bolton also allegedly said, "I'm not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up." It is expected that several more officials from the State Department, the Pentagon and the White House National Security Council will testify behind closed doors this week.

The head of the EPA, Rick Perry has also recently announced his resignation. Trump has said that Perry was the one that urged him to make contact with Ukraine, which may have been true, but according to Perry it was for his job seeking energy contracts, which is pretty standard in his line of work. 

With all this happening, a NY state judge has ordered Trump’s subpoenaed tax returns of the past eight years be handed over as part of an investigation. He is now turning the GOP against him with a reckless military policy of taking US troops out of Syria bordering Turkey, which has allowed our Kurdish allies to be slaughtered.

Polling already shows unprecedented public support to impeach him, with over 50% in favor; a number Clinton never touched and Nixon was under 20% this early on. It is very likely that the House will draft several articles of impeachment including, but not limited to extortion, obstruction of justice, violation of election law, and abuse of power. 

That said, it is still unlikely that the Republican controlled Senate will vote to remove Trump from office after the House officially files articles of impeachment, but as more evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors mounts by the day, only time will tell how this saga ends.