Is Trump impeachment (im)possible?

US historians say impeachments are rare because they amount to nothing short of the nullification of an election. So far in US history while Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were impeached, they were not convicted. Clinton managed to be re-elected in the next Presidential elections. Richard Nixon resigned before he was impeached in the wake of the infamous Water Gate scandal that involved illegal surveillance of political Democratic opponents. Courtesy: Smita Sharma, Senior Journalist

Hyderabad: US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on Thursday that President Donald J Trump will be impeached. Essentially she gave her green light for Trump’s impeachment without specific details of the proposed timeline. The former reality TV star and billionaire real estate Moghul turned politician Trump will be the fourth among 45 US Presidents in its history to be subjected to impeachment.

Allegations

The process of impeachment began in September this year after claims of an anonymous whistleblower to the US Congress that Trump abused his powerful oval office to coerce the Ukrainian President to launch investigations into his political rivals- former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter. According to the complaint, Trump dangled a carrot of 400 million USD of US military aid to seek a meeting in White House with President Volodymyr Zelensky and arm-twist him to probe his leading Democratic presidential challenger Biden and his family. Trump, reportedly, sought to probe of conflict of interest allegations while Biden was Vice President when his son Hunter joined a Ukrainian energy company. Secondly, according to reports, Trump also wanted proof that it was Ukraine and not Russia that interfered in the 2016 US Presidential Elections by allegedly hacking the Democratic Party emails- a conspiracy theory that has not found any acceptance within the American intelligence agencies who have painted Russia as the main villain in their democratic process.

What's Next?

Democrats who control the Lower House of Representatives are now expected to send the articles or allegations which are the basis for seeking Trump’s impeachment to the upper Senate. Once it is done, the Senate will have to hold a trial and will require a two-thirds majority to convict and remove the President from Office. However, given that the Republican Party holds majority seats in the Upper House, Trump is unlikely to be unseated but the entire trail could turn into scathing political warfare in an election year.

What could happen next in the US impeachment inquiry on President Donald Trump.

“If It becomes a trial in the US Senate, the President will have his defenders like in any trial. Ultimately, the Senate will have to vote on whether he should be impeached. The most likely outcome, because Republicans have a large majority in the Senate, is that he will not be found guilty or he will not be impeached. At the end of it, he will say I have been vindicated, I wasn’t impeached, I am innocent. That is quite predictable. Republicans have always stuck behind him and are saying that even if he did all of these things, there is nothing wrong in it,” says George Perkovich, Vice President for Studies, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in Exclusive remarks to ETV Bharat.

Will Democrats Benefit?

So far in US history while Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were impeached, they were not convicted. Clinton managed to be re-elected in the next Presidential elections. Richard Nixon resigned before he was impeached in the wake of the infamous Water Gate scandal that involved illegal surveillance of political Democratic opponents.

“Two prior cases were quite different. One was Andrew Johnson in the 1870s. He did not return for a second term anyway. The other was Bill Clinton who was impeached but was re-elected. So you can draw any conclusion from that. What we know is that the President has a base of support. Around 40 percent of the population that no matter what he does they still support it. So, you will have an election in a year. The information that came out of that impeachment will be part of that election. It is very difficult to predict whether he will be able to gain an additional few percentages he needs,” adds Perkovich.

It is difficult to say if the Democrats can tarnish Trump’s image enough during the trail to affect his presidential prospects given the ups and downs in their camp as they search for their 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidate. The popular Kamala Harris is the latest entrant to exit the Democratic candidates camp while former New York City Mayor and media owner Michael Bloomberg have made his entry. It promises to be another all guns out a heated polarising political campaign for the superpower country’s top job.

What we know of events leading up to US Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi's impeachment call on September 24.

“Donald Trump wasn’t ahead in 2016 at this point among Republicans and he came out of nowhere and he won. So, the field is thinning. But right now Vice President Joe Biden remains with a significant lead. He would have to come down. Then, which of the one or two people would come up is difficult to predict. I find it unlikely that Mike Bloomberg from where he is starting today can to the top, but difficult to predict this early. The elections are still more than a year away,” underlines Perkovich.