In July, Trump made a now-infamous phone call to the new Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. The content of this phone call has a portion of the government and even public asking for Trump’s impeachment. 

Background Information:

The claim that the Bidens are connected to corruption derives from two events that may not be connected. Ukraine long struggled with issues of corruption. The past Ukrainian Prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, had been investigating the head of a natural gas company Hunter Biden joined in 2014 known as Burisma. Concern regarding the Bidens and corruption derives from the already on-going investigation of Burisma, Hunter Biden’s presence in the company, and Joe Biden’s demand in December of 2015 for the Ukraine president to fire Viktor Shokin because of what Biden saw as a failure to do his job. What remains to be found is any evidence proving the connection between the two Bidens’ influence in Ukraine and if there was any corruption they were involved in. 

The Phone Call:

It is surmised that within the phone call between Trump and Zelensky, Trump congratulated the president for his election and asked  Zelensky to look into possible corruption regarding Biden and Ukraine. 

In the middle of August, the Director of National Intelligence received a complaint from a whistleblower regarding Trump’s phone call with the Ukranian president, alleging that Trump pressured the president to look into the Bidens for corruption and used this call for his own personal gain. Within the complaint, there was also a slight suggestion in connecting Trump’s call and the United States’ delay in providing security assistance to Ukraine. 

Why could this be an issue of impeachment:

If Trump made a quid pro quo with the Ukrainian president in July he could be guilty of criminal activities [quid pro quo is asking for a favor and giving something in return]. There is, at the moment, no certainty whether or not Trump made any quid pro quos with Zelensky and there is no evidence supporting the Biden/corruption allegations. 

Impeachment

Impeachment is the official process of charging the president with a crime and the method of accusing him and holding the trial to determine his guilt. The process for impeachment is not an easy one; it is intentionally strenuous to ensure that presidents aren’t wrongfully removed from office. 

 The “simplified” steps of impeachment:

1.  A member of the House of Representatives must make an impeachment resolution
2. The Speaker of the House must guide a special committee (usually the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary) to hold a hearing that will be voted on by the full chamber. They also have to decide when the hearing will occur
3. In order for the resolution to move to full chamber vote, a majority of the Judiciary Committee has to vote in approval of it
4. Then the resolution goes to the House of Representatives for a “full vote”, if a majority votes for it the president is impeached.
5. Now resolution becomes a trial and makes its way to the Senate who decides when the trail will be held and how the trial will be accomplished
6.  Within the trial:
   1.  Members of the House of Representatives serve similar roles as prosecutors as they provide evidence against the president. 
   2. Counsel represents the president (he chooses whom)
   3. Chief justice presides over the trial
   4. Senators act like the jury→ they listen to the trial, retire to discuss, and reconvene with a decision of whether the president is guilty of a “high crime (or) misdemeanor” (though it takes ⅔ to vote the president guilty)
7. If it is decided that the president is guilty by the senators, he is removed from office and the vice president becomes president.

The question is will it come to impeachment or not? We’ll see…