What’s going on:

Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America, is facing the most decisive moment of his political career: an impeachment trial in the Senate. On September 24th, 2019, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, embarked on a shocking crusade that most citizens still don’t comprehend. Then, on December 18th, the House decided to approve the inquiry based on two articles –abuse of power and obstruction of Congress– which act as charges in a regular trial. Furthermore, an obvious question arises: Is the impeachment inquiry truly a way for the valiant Democrats to pursue justice? Or is it just their way to smear Trump’s name and impact his political image in a negative way before the 2020 election?

Impeachment:

In the history of the United States, only 3 presidents have been impeached, but none were removed from office. Andrew Johnson was impeached in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Donald Trump in 2019. Removing a president from office is a complex process that entails more than various trials. Even Clinton, who committed perjury and obstruction of justice, wasn’t removed. First, a member of the House of Representatives must introduce an impeachment resolution to the Judiciary Committee. Then, if the committee approves the resolution, the House proceeds to a vote. If the majority of voters approve an article of impeachment, the president is impeached; after this, a trial begins at the senate. At the end of the trial, the senators must vote, and if at least two-thirds of them vote in favor of impeachment, the President is removed from office and the Vice-President takes his place.

The call:

In April of 2019, Trump had a conversation with newly-elected Ukranian president Volodímir Zelenski. The phone call began with Trump praising and congratulating Zelenski on his recent victory. Zelenski responded in the same manner. A couple of compliments later, Trump started to address the elephant in the room: Joe Biden, his son Hunter, and their alleged corruption during the Obama presidency. “Good because I heard you [Ukraine] had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that’s really unfair. A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved,” Trump said. He’s referring to 2015, the year when Joe Biden was Vice-President of the United States and working as an emissary in Ukraine. During this time, the US was providing a one billion dollar military aid to Ukraine. Biden used the aid as leverage to pressure the Ukranian government into firing the new Prosecutor General, who was opening an investigation on corruption charges against his son, Hunter. “The other thing, there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me,” Trump said. Did Trump want Joe Biden to be investigated in the name of justice? Or did he want the investigation to become public and affect Biden’s political career negatively?

Should he be impeached?:

Trump shouldn’t be impeached. It’s simple. He made a call. He didn’t abuse his power in any way. There wasn’t any kind of threat, no quid-pro-quo agreement, and no harmful intentions. Yet, if Democrats have the chance to hurt Trump, they won’t hesitate. “I think it was really a witch hunt. They were looking for something when there was clearly no wrong-doing from Trump’s part. It was the House, which is controlled by Democrats, so in reality, it doesn’t say much. It wasn’t a bipartisan effort. No Republican voted in favor of the impeachment and even some democrats voted against it. So as you can see, it was clearly a democrat attempt to hurt Trump,” Gregorio Correa, TCS student, and United States citizen, said.