According to polls there’s still controversies about Trump impeachment but the atmosphere in House is else. Washington (CNN)After a whiplash week, America is facing the reality of a new long national nightmare over a potentially corrupt presidency and an impeachment is a case on the table. Forty-five years after Watergate, 20 years after Bill Clinton’s shame, the mechanism […]
According to polls there’s still controversies about Trump impeachment but the atmosphere in House is else.
Washington (CNN)After a whiplash week, America is facing the reality of a new long national nightmare over a potentially corrupt presidency and an impeachment is a case on the table.
Forty-five years after Watergate, 20 years after Bill Clinton’s shame, the mechanism of impeachment is again grinding into life in Washington. The attempt by Democrats to oust a defiant President Donald Trump seems likely, given already bitter divides, to pour even more poison into the nation’s political soul than those previous two impeachment dramas.
Unlike the complicated and confusing picture of shady dealings with Russians and potential obstruction painted by special counsel Robert Mueller, the questions pending in the new showdown are clear cut — a factor that adds to the President’s political vulnerability.
Did Trump abuse his power by leveraging hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer military aid to pressure a foreign country to damage a political opponent? And did the White House then engage in an effort to cover it up?
“The President of the United States has betrayed his oath of office, betrayed his oath to defend our national security, and betrayed his oath to defend our constitution,” House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff said Thursday.
The whistleblower complaint against Trump regarding his July 25 phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky is a “roadmap,” Schiff said. The document’s accusations of a cover-up opens up several key Trump allies to interrogation, such as lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr, and it alludes to possible other instances where records were kept secret for political purposes.
Already, 219 House Democrats — more than half of the 435 members — have publicly stated support for Trump impeachment proceedings, according to CNN’s count.
The character of the Republican defense of the President is clear as well. GOP lawmakers and supporters are already seeking to discredit what appears to be strong documentary evidence of pressure by Trump on Zelensky. And the White House frames impeachment as another gross attack by Democrats on Trump, a President who they say viewed as illegitimate ever since his 2016 victory.
“What these guys are doing, Democrats are doing to this country is a disgrace, and it shouldn’t be allowed. There should be a way of stopping it,” Trump said, of the constitutional process of checks and balances, in a fiery statement on the airport tarmac after returning from New York on Thursday.
- source : CNN