Why Trump's Ukraine Call Has Invigorated Calls for Impeachment

(Bloomberg) -- Impeachment talk was limited to a vocal minority during President Donald Trump’s first two years in office. It’s grown louder in 2019 with opposition Democrats in control of the U.S. House of Representatives, where the formal charges known as articles of impeachment originate. The push for impeachment has endured even after the anticlimactic end to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s long investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and Trump’s possible obstruction of that probe. A new revelation that might link Trump’s presidential actions to his own political interests has added fuel to the impeachment push.

1. What’s the new revelation?

During a July 25 telephone call, Trump is said to have pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. For months, Trump’s team has been alleging that Biden, while vice president, acted inappropriately to prevent an investigation into his son’s business activities in Ukraine. Biden is now seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination to challenge Trump next year. Trump acknowledges speaking with Zelenskiy about the Bidens but says he acted appropriately. It’s been suggested -- but denied by Trump -- that he threatened to cut off aid to Ukraine if he didn’t get his way. The storyline contains risks for Democrats if it allows Trump and congressional Republicans to keep raising questions about Hunter Biden’s time on the board of Burisma Group, one of Ukraine’s biggest private gas companies, while his father was vice president.

2. What would be wrong about Trump pushing for investigation?

It would raise the specter of a president seeking a foreign government’s help to discredit a domestic political rival. “If the president is essentially withholding military aid, at the same time that he is trying to browbeat a foreign leader into doing something illicit -- that is, providing dirt on his opponent during a presidential campaign,” then impeachment may be in order, said Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Schiff’s comment on Sept. 22 was seen as significant in part because he had not been among the sizable number of Democrats already on record as pushing for impeachment of Trump.

3. Why was impeaching Trump already on the table?

Though Mueller’s team didn’t conclude that Trump’s 2016 campaign conspired in Russia’s interference in the 2016 election campaign, it did find instances where Trump may have obstructed justice. Since then, the number of House Democrats supporting a first step toward impeachment has grown, now topping 130. Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, chairman of the House committee where any impeachment inquiry would begin, said on July 28 that Trump “has done many impeachable offenses” and “richly deserves impeachment.” The leader of House Democrats, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has advocated a go-slow approach, says she is waiting in part for the results of investigations into Trump’s personal finances and business dealings.

4. How would impeachment begin?

A simple majority vote by the House, where Democrats hold 235 of the 435 seats, would trigger an impeachment inquiry by the House Judiciary Committee, where Democrats outnumber Republicans 24 to 17. It’s also possible the committee could open an impeachment inquiry on its own. If the committee were to draw up a formal written charge, known as an article of impeachment, and vote to send it to the full House, another majority vote would then refer the matter for a trial in the Senate -- one of the more unusual spectacles in American politics. If two-thirds of the senators present vote to convict (an intentionally high bar), the president would be ordered removed from office.

5. What’s keeping the Democrats from starting the process?

Any impeachment resolution adopted by the House would have to be ironclad to stand a chance in the majority-Republican Senate, where an acquittal could end up strengthening Trump’s national standing. That explains why Pelosi, explaining her hesitancy to move forward with a formal impeachment inquiry, has said that “the stronger our case is, the worse the Senate will look for just letting the president off the hook.” Plus, many Americans aren’t eager to see a repeat of the warfare that raged two decades ago when Republicans sought to remove President Bill Clinton. Polls have shown that more Americans oppose trying to impeach Trump than support the idea, with divisions largely along party lines.

6. Would this even be an impeachable offense?

Congress decides that. The U.S. Constitution says the president “shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” As Congress has defined it through the years, the phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors” includes exceeding or abusing the powers of the presidency, or misusing the office for improper purpose or gain.

7. What impeachable offenses has Trump been accused of?

An impeachment resolution brought to a House vote on July 24 said Trump “has sown seeds of discord” among Americans and “demonstrated that he is unfit to be president” in his comments about four freshman House Democrats, all women of color. The measure was tabled in a procedural vote, 332-95, with Democrats providing the only votes to keep considering it. A separate proposed impeachment resolution sitting in the House’s in-box alleges Trump “prevented, obstructed and impeded the administration of justice” during Mueller’s investigation. Some Democrats also have proposed other grounds, including sowing racial discord and accepting benefits known as emoluments.

8. How often does impeachment happen?

The House has initiated impeachment proceedings more than 60 times, according to its historian’s office, and voted to impeach 15 federal judges, one senator, one cabinet secretary and two presidents -- Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998. Eight judges were convicted and removed from office.

9. How many presidents have been removed by impeachment?

Technically speaking, none. Johnson, impeached by the House for firing the secretary of war, survived because the Senate fell just one vote short of a two-thirds majority to remove him. Fifty senators voted to remove Clinton for obstruction of justice, and 45 voted to remove him for perjury, also shy of the two-thirds majority. Richard Nixon resigned the presidency in 1974 when it became clear he would be impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate. The House Judiciary Committee had approved three articles of impeachment accusing him of obstruction of justice, abuse of power and contempt of Congress, for his role in covering up the politically motivated break-in of Democratic National Committee headquarters at Washington’s Watergate office building.

The Reference Shelf

• Ukrainian authorities have found no dirt on the Bidens.
• The Congressional Research Service’s 2015 report on impeachment and removal.
• Why Pelosi balks at impeachment.
• Trump once said the stock market would crash if he’s impeached.
• Congress can’t ignore a clearly impeachable offense, Cass R. Sunstein writes in Bloomberg Opinion.

To contact the reporter on this story: Billy House in Washington at bhouse5@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kevin Whitelaw at kwhitelaw@bloomberg.net, Laurence Arnold, Larry Liebert

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