Donald Trump is in the biggest mess of what has been a very messy political career.
There’s already been the Mueller investigation,
his handling of the border crisis,
his firing of James Comey, and all the shenanigans that went on during his presidential campaign.
But now the Ukraine scandal is threatening to outweigh all of that.
It’s looking like Trump could be … impeached.
You can't impeach a president for doing a great job.
So what is impeachment?
Impeachment is a step in the process of removing a president from office.
A process that could end with Trump being told: you’re fired.
You're fired!
You're fired! Get out of here!
A president can be impeached for treason or bribery,
or the rather vague 'high crimes and misdemeanours'.
High crimes and misdemeanours isn’t really defined in the US constitution.
But it essentially means, you know, having been up to no good.
News presenter: Five people have been arrested and charge with breaking in
the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee.
Presidents have been impeached before.
But it doesn’t happen often.
Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998.
He was accused of obstructing justice and lying under oath.
I did not have sexual relations with that woman.
I misled people.
Including even my wife.
Andrew Johnson was impeached in 1868.
Johnson was seen as too sympathetic to Confederate leaders
in the wake of the American civil war.
He was ultimately nobbled when he fired his secretary of war.
The House of Representatives was preparing to impeach Richard Nixon in 1974,
after people connected with Nixon's re-election campaign
broke into the Democratic party headquarters, Watergate,
and Nixon tried to cover it up.
But Nixon resigned before he could be impeached.
I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow.
They're pursuing an illegal, invalid and unconstitutional bullshit impeachment.
If Trump is impeached it seems likely it’ll be over his dealings with Ukraine.
But long before we found out about Trump asking Ukraine to investigate
Joe Biden,
there were already moves to impeach the president.
In fact, one particularly keen Democratic congressman began calling for Trump
to be impeached in May 2017.
This offence has occurred before our very eyes.
And even before that infamous Ukraine phone call, Trump was already under investigation
for things that could have led to impeachment.
Things including:
paying off a porn star following an alleged affair;
his refusal to release his tax returns, and whether anything nefarious is exposed
in those returns;
profiting off the office of president,
like in his DC hotel, where numerous foreign dignitaries have stayed;
interfering with Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference;
firing James Comey, who was head of the FBI.
So how would Trump be impeached?
It’s the House of Representatives that decides whether to impeach a president.
Someone will present ‘articles of impeachment’.
Essentially, documents detailing the accusations against Trump.
The articles are then voted on by the House judiciary committee.
Democrats have a majority on the judiciary committee, so that could be plain sailing.
Then the entire House of Representatives – 435 congressmen and women – vote on
whether to impeach.
If a simple majority vote to impeach,
then Trump is impeached.
225 representatives have already said they support impeachment,
so that kind of seems like a done deal: Trump will be impeached.
But being impeached doesn’t mean Trump will be packing up his golf clubs, bathrobes
and golden chairs just yet.
It just means everything moves to the Senate,
where things get a little trickier.
Impeachment means a president, in this case, Donald Trump, is essentially put on trial
in the Senate.
In there, the 100 senators, two from each state, act as the jury.
If a two-thirds majority of the senators vote to convict, then it’s bye bye Trump.
Bye bye!
Of course, the whole process is lined with potential political pitfalls.
Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat, had been reluctant to start the impeachment process.
It could galvanise Trump’s rock-solid ‘make America great again’ base
who already see the president as the victim of a grand deep-state conspiracy.
It's a waste of time.
Because it seems like it's biased.
Do you have any regrets?
No, I would vote for him again.
On the other hand, about half of the American public
are now in favour of impeachment.
Perhaps voters will appreciate the Democrats’ bolder stance.
What we do know is that right now 53 of the 100 senators are Republicans.
At this moment in time, they might not be keen to give
their president the boot.
But, this is Donald Trump.
Who knows what could come up between now, and a Senate trial.
And if public opinion continues to turn against Trump,
don’t be surprised if some of his Republican colleagues
start to turn against him too.