After nearly three years of speculation, the ghost of impeachment looks to finally be knocking at the oval office door.
It is expected that Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, will officially announce the commencement of an impeachment inquiry in the coming hours.
An inquiry is the first step in the impeachment process, an evidence gathering exercise before a vote is held by the House of Representatives and later tried in the Senate.
The news comes after a whistle-blower complaint stated that Donald Trump had attempted to bribe the Ukrainian government into finding ‘dirt’ on former vice president and potential Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, in the 2020 election.
This new information is the possible smoking gun that many Democrats had been hoping for throughout Trump’s tenure – making a move to impeach almost impossible to ignore.
The allegations suggest that Donald Trump repeated asked Ukranian President Volodomir Zelensky to investigate Hunter Biden, the son of Obama’s vice president and the early leader amongst the 2020 field.
Major party figures have already come out to say they would vote to impeach, with 29 members of the House indicating their support for impeachment over the past few days.
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Despite a plethora of scandals that would bring down a president under normal circumstances – a string of affairs with porn stars (including hush payments), financial conflicts of interest, alleged collusion and clear obstruction of justice – this possible final scandal is a surprise one.
The allegations indicate that during a July telephone conversation Trump repeatedly tried to influence the newly elected Ukrainian president to carry out an investigation – clearly prohibited under United States law.
Since the news was broken earlier this week, the president has repeatedly resisted calls to release the transcripts of this conversation; he has since indicated that a full an unredacted transcript will be made available tomorrow.
His initial resistance was taken with suspicion across the house and after three years of speculation, it appears as though Speaker Nancy Pelosi is finally moving towards impeachment.
Although it is possible the transcripts will absolve the president, the move to impeach will likely still carry; the wealth of other ‘high crimes and misdemeanours’ (the constitutionally laid standard for impeachment) cited by Democrat members of Congress throughout Trump’s tenure will likely still be considered.
Although it is unclear why this is the final straw for Pelosi, the move towards impeachment will likely excite those across America who have been frustrated by her lack of action over previous instances of alleged wrongdoing by the president.
After three years of allegations being thrown at the Teflon President, it seems that something may now finally have stuck
