Written by Wisley Lau

“Finally!” said late-night talk show host Samantha Bee when American Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi dropped a bombshell announcement: a formal impeachment inquiry on President of the United States Donald Trump after a whistleblower complaint about a call Trump had with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. People in the US are getting hyped on the possibility that Donald Trump could have a chance to get impeached. However, will this be the ultimate scandal that can bring down the president?

Impeachment is one of the most consequential decisions a legislator can make, as it is a criminal charge against the president that results in them being ousted from office and being convicted of a crime. In the United States, the three reasons that can lead to impeachment are treason, bribery or serious misconduct.

For impeachment to be effective, it first begins in the House of Representatives as an impeachment inquiry, where a committee investigates and holds hearings about the president’s conduct. If the House’s majority (at least 218 representatives) have found impeachable offenses, the process then moves to the Senate, where a trial will be held. The president will have to leave office if a two-thirds majority (67 senators) vote to impeach the president. Until now, only 2 presidents have been charged with impeachment: Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, both for charges related to high crimes and misdemeanors, as Richard Nixon resigned on his own before the House could finish impeaching him.

It all began for Trump with a whistleblower complaint that claimed Trump had been using his power of office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the upcoming 2020 election; Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election. Senior White House officials have reportedly been looking for evidence of that phone call, and they are even claiming they had witnessed the president abusing his office for his own political gain.

As a result, Nancy Pelosi announced the impeachment inquiry and the White House released the phone record between Trump and the Ukrainian president the day after. In the conversation, Trump threatened Volodymyr Zelensky to dig up dirt on front-running Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his son Hunter in order to get war supplies from the US that Congress had already approved. It is deeply disturbing to consider a sitting US president abusing his power of office to make a foreign country interfere with a US election and, understandably, people want Trump to face consequences for his actions.

The whistleblower complaint was released the following day, and it proved all of the main points relating to the phone call while showing more details on how the White House tried to move Trump’s records to a different computer server with second-hand sources from multiple US officials. Unsurprisingly, many Republicans and indeed Trump himself are defensive about the claims, with Trump calling the whistleblower a “deep state spy” and saying that it is a “perfect phone call” with “no quid pro quo”.

But Trump, it has been claimed, was not alone in his corruption. US attorney William Barr, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Vice President Mike Pence, and Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani has been implicated in the phone call scandal and will be questioned also.

When the impeachment inquiries to government officials began, there were more shocking revelations about the ‘perfect phone call’ with some people saying the transcript has missed some key wordings and could be damaging to the president.

On October 31, the House of Representatives voted to continue the investigation as Trump impeachment resolution was passed with 0 Republican votes and most of the voters who agree with the resolution are Democrats

So far, Congress has been looking into a lot of the president’s misconduct, such as his campaign finance violations and whether or not he is using the office to enrich himself, but the one area where there is enough evidence to use against Trump is obstruction of justice.

The crucial information that may lead to Trump’s indictment is available because Robert Muller published a report during the Russia investigation about Trump obstructing justice, and listed ten examples where the president has tried to stop him from getting information. One of them is related to Don McGahn, Trump’s White House Counsel who got a lot of attention as he threatened to resign after refusing to send someone to fire Robert Muller when the president made him do ridiculous things (there was a quote for that but the author chose not to write it due to strong language). According to McGhan, Trump said to him that “Mueller has to go” and he requested that McGhan “call him back after he has done it”. Even though Don did not do it, it is still strong evidence that Trump wanted to prevent the Muller investigation to discover his shady dealings

Currently, in the Trump Ukraine scandal, Democrats assert that because of the phone transcript, there is solid evidence that Trump is abusing his own power. With two whistleblowers and public testimony from government officials, there will be more evidence that can be used to impeach Trump at the impeachment inquiry. All of this could lead to Trump vacating the White House.

However, not everyone is so convinced. Cynics claim that Trump has already commited several misdemeanors such as 22 sexual harassment accusations and paying money to porn stars to silence them from speaking out about their affairs with him and yet he remains in office. They say that the Ukraine scandal will be just like every other scandal Trump has faced; it starts with hype and lots of excitement for Trump to be impeached but in the end, nothing will happen.

So will Trump be impeached? That remains to be seen. But we can rest assured that Samantha Bee will be hoping for it.