The first impeachment procedure of the 21st century

News Mondays – Mégane Luquiens

The United States is gearing up for the 2020 presidential elections, just under a year away. Meanwhile, a new scandal has erupted, leading to the opening of impeachment proceedings - impeachment - against Donald Trump.

Impeachment is a simpler process than it seems. The first step takes place in the House of Representatives, where an investigation is conducted, followed by a vote on the charges against the president. If the House passes the articles of impeachment because there is sufficient evidence, the Senate then proceeds to try the head of state. The president is suspended from office for the duration of the trial, and the upper chamber of Congress is presided over not by the vice president, as is customary, but by the chief justice of the Supreme Court. At the conclusion of the trial, the president is removed from office if the senators find him guilty by a two-thirds majority. The vice president then immediately takes his place.

In the history of the United States, this procedure has been initiated four times. Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Abraham Lincoln after his assassination, and Bill Clinton, 42^th President, were the only two to be impeached by the House of Representatives. Both continued in office, however, as neither was convicted by the Senate. It is interesting to note, however, that Johnson escaped his charges by only one vote, demonstrating the complexity of this procedure.

The two other presidents to have faced this procedure are Nixon and Trump. Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 before the House of Representatives had time to impeach him. In the midst of the Watergate scandal, he was likely to be the first president to be impeached and removed from office. In the end, Donald Trump, current President of the United States, finds himself in the same critical situation as Johnson, Nixon and Clinton.

July 25, 2019

On that date, a phone call was recorded between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president. During that conversation, the U.S. president asked his counterpart to investigate Joe Biden—Obama’s vice president and, more importantly, a Democrat in the 2020 presidential race—and his son, Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden had been appointed to the board of directors of a Ukrainian gas company and was paid $50,000 a month in 2014. What raised some questions about this appointment was the fact that Hunter Biden had no particular experience in this field and that it occurred while his father was the right-hand man of the 44th^th president.

The journalists then asked if there were any conflicts of interest in view of Ukraine's situation vis-à-vis Russia. Trump therefore asked Zelenski to investigate the Biden family, having already sent his personal lawyer to Ukraine in the spring. The main argument of the Trump camp is, therefore, that the president just wanted to ask his counterpart to go further in the fight against corruption in the country, a subject of legitimate concern to Western powers.

The minutes of the famous July 25 call are reduced to five pages and only partially reproduce the exchanges between the two heads of state. It was published on September 25 at the request of Trump, who was hoping to put an end to the affair. A very intense debate animated the White House, and Pompeo, the Secretary of State, had surely understood before Trump what was problematic in this call. Indeed, what was at stake in this conversation rested on the word «blackmail». In asking Zelensky to investigate the Biden family, Trump was referring to the military aid promised to the Ukrainians. This aid, worth four hundred million in arms, had been suspended by the White House a short time earlier. The Ukrainian president admits that this assistance is very important for his country.

Trump's exact phrase during this call is, «I would nevertheless like you to do us a favor.» After analyzing this essential sentence, we notice that the president uses the personal pronoun «I», which shows that this is not the president of the United States addressing another president, but one man to another. «Favor» clearly expresses that Donald Trump expects something in return for the help that grants it. A whistleblower working within the intelligence services has reported the problematic content of this conversation to his superiors, which leads us straight to the opening of impeachment proceedings.

The three problems

Firstly, if this exchange between the heads of state turned out to be blackmail, Trump would have used his power to obtain compromising information from a foreign government about his political rival. He would have used his public position to serve his private interests.

Secondly, if this is still a deal that is indeed on offer in this phone interview, it implies that the US president is calling for foreign interference in the upcoming elections. This issue echoes the Russian interference that took place in 2016. The prosecutor in charge of that case concluded on July 24, the day before the phone meeting with Zelensky, that neither he nor anyone close to Trump could be charged with conspiracy. We might therefore ask whether this victory for businessman didn't make him think he was untouchable and could get away with anything.

Recently, we learned that the White House attempted to conceal this conversation with Zelensky by storing the transcript on a secure server so that it would not be easily accessible. It was this action, in particular, that prompted the whistleblower to come forward. Trump is therefore suspected of obstruction of justice.

The House of Representatives is questioning several people, including Gordon Sondland, Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Vindman. Even if all these testimonies accuse Donald Trump, few believe that he will actually be removed from office. While the House of Representatives has been Democratic-majority since January 2019, the Senate remains Republican-majority. Remembering that it's the upper house of Congress that has the final say, it's hard to imagine Republicans voting against the president.

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