Democratic lawmakers have a strong case for impeaching U.S. President Donald Trump if they can prove he abused his power when he asked Ukraine’s president to “look into” an American political rival, several legal experts said.
Trump pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate Joe Biden, an early favorite to win the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, according to a summary of a Trump phone call released this week by the White House.
According to Reuters The administration also released a whistleblower’s complaint that questioned whether U.S. aid was held up until Ukraine showed it would act on Trump’s request.
The legal experts said the central question in an impeachment inquiry is whether Trump put his interest above those of the nation by leveraging aid to Ukraine in return for incriminating information. Evidence of a cover-up could strengthen the impeachment case, they said.
“The U.S. has a national security interest in Ukraine and it does appear that what the president was doing was putting that national security interest at risk in exchange for political benefits,” said Louis Michael Seidman, a professor at Georgetown Law. “If that is what happened, that is the core of what impeachment is about.”
According to Reuters U.S. House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry on Tuesday.
According to RushHourDaily If the Democratic-led House of Representatives votes to approve articles of impeachment, the Republican-controlled Senate would then decide whether to find Trump guilty and remove him from office.
Under the U.S. Constitution, the president can be impeached for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
According to RushHourDaily Legal experts said Trump’s call with Zelenskiy, who was seeking U.S. missiles, may run afoul of the bribery statute or violate campaign finance law, which makes it a crime to solicit a benefit to the campaign from a foreign national.
But during an impeachment inquiry, lawmakers are not required to adhere to strict legal definitions and can look more broadly at whether Trump used his authority for personal gain, experts said.
According to Reuters Trump has said that his call with Zelenskiy was perfectly appropriate. He has said he did not put pressure on the Ukrainian president to look into Biden, who Trump says improperly tried to halt a Ukrainian probe of a company with ties to his son Hunter.
According to RushHourDaily David Rivkin, a constitutional litigator and a former Justice Department lawyer said there was nothing inappropriate about asking a foreign country to investigate a U.S. citizen who may have violated the laws of that country.
“The fact some of such persons are currently running for political office in the United States doesn’t and cannot render them immune from foreign investigations.”
Related: Trump authorizes the release of the call transcript of Ukraine call
