Impeachment of Donald Trump

Maya Barany, writer

As of December 18th, President Donald Trump has been impeached by the House of Representatives on the charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Trump’s conduct in September and dating back to his lawyers involvement for over seven months with the government of Ukraine was found to be a high crime and misdemeanor by congress. The federal election campaign laws clearly state soliciting foreign aid in elections is a felony offense, and therefore an impeachable one.

The time for “alleged” as a term to describe the president’s conduct is over. 

Trump withheld 391 million dollars of congressional military aid to solicit interference in the 2020 election, and now is the third US president in history to be impeached, marking the start of the final step: a trial in the senate to decide removal from office. 

After only two months and three weeks, the full house approved these articles, despite relentless efforts by the White House to defy subpoenas, with Trump directing current and former executives to withhold documents and records. The refusal to comply in his own investigation caused the second charge against him, obstruction of Congress, to be added this November. Congress’ resolution of this article even states the administration’s obstruction of the impeachment process “attempts to nullify a vital constitutional safeguard vested solely in congress.”

Early next year 100 senate members will act as jurors in a full trial to decide whether or not to convict the president. The debate is now about whether the trial will cause 20 of the 53 republican senators to defect from party lines to win a 2/3 majority. The pressure is on the democratic party to act as quickly as possible to avoid interference in the 2020 election. For those concerned, now is the best time to contact senators and potentially affect how the next year will go,  and set a precedent of what is acceptable within the Presidential institution.