House begins impeachment inquiry into President Trump

The House of Representatives has begun official impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.

Patricia Zengerle reported the news for Reuters:

Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives plunge into a formal impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump on Wednesday, a move that could dramatically change the 2020 presidential race.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who had for months resisted calls inside her party for Trump’s impeachment, announced her decision after meeting with members of her party on Tuesday.

In a brief, nationally televised statement, Pelosi accused Trump of seeking Ukraine’s help to smear Democratic presidential frontrunner Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 election.

She described the Republican president’s behavior as a “betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections.”

Trump fired back quickly on Twitter, calling the inquiry “Witch Hunt garbage.”

Even if the Democratic-controlled House ultimately voted to impeach Trump, it is unlikely to lead to his removal from office. Republicans hold a slim majority in the Senate, where an impeachment ruling would need a two-thirds majority to pass.

But the process could damage the president’s image as he vies for re-election, with only about 45% of Americans approving of his performance as president, especially if damaging information comes out during public hearings.

Stephen Collinson from CNN noted:

President Donald Trump is wasting no time in attempting to torch House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s impeachment gamble in a battle that will define his presidency and the 2020 election.

Trump has pledged to publish an un-redacted and declassified transcript on Wednesday of a phone call with Ukraine’s leader at the center of what Democrats allege is his abuse of presidential power. The White House is also planning to release to Congress a whistleblower’s complaint that triggered the week-long crisis that has rocked the Trump presidency.

Trump’s decision marks a departure for a White House that has a record of obstructing oversight and bending fact. So his critics will await events on Wednesday with particular interest.

The transcript and the congressional reaction to the whistleblower’s report could be critical in establishing the early terrain of the impeachment fight and to shaping public opinion that will ultimately dictate how it turns out.

Regardless of the outcome, Trump finds himself at the center of a rare and historic showdown as only the fourth president in US history to face the realistic threat of impeachment.

Devin Coldeway from TechCrunch explained:

Impeachment does not mean the government stops doing what it needs to do, of course. But it does immediately become one of the highest priority items on the White House’s already crowded to-do list. It’s more than possible that with impeachment work, the smoldering conflict in Saudi Arabia, immigration and ICE issues, and innumerable other issues and legal challenges, something like social media regulation may simply not be important enough to actively pursue.

The Trump administration has a complicated relationship with the tech industry. Many would say that it was the savvy leveraging of social media that helped the man get elected. And Trump has embraced Twitter so closely as to make it effectively the main instrument of his office. But he has also repeatedly lashed out against companies like Facebook and Google for a variety of reasons, often having to do with a perceived bias against him or conservatives in general.

This summer, for example: In July the president said there “may or may not be National Security concerns with regard to Google and their relationship with China.” Then the next week he suggested Google had taken “very illegal” actions, specifically that they “suppressed negative stories on Hillary Clinton, and boosted negative stories on Donald Ttump [sic].” Shortly after that, he accused Google of having “manipulated from 2.6 million to 16 million votes” in favor of Clinton in the 2016 election, saying “Google should be sued.”