A whistleblower has rightfully spawned an impeachment charge that should signal the end of President Donald Trump’s run in the oval office.
The anonymous whistleblower alleged in a phone call Trump asked Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden, who could have potentially run against Trump in the 2020 election. It was also alleged the White House tried to cover up the call.
The term whistleblower refers to someone that releases information that they believe is, “Evidence of illegality, gross waste or fraud, mismanagement, abuse of power, general wrongdoing, or a substantial and specific danger to public health and safety,” according to the Government Accountability Project.
To no one’s surprise, an audio clip of Trump attacking the whistleblower at a White House event surfaced online.
In the clip, Trump said the whistleblower was “close to a spy” and that, “In the old days . . . we used to handle it a little differently than we do now,” suggesting that the anonymous person deserves to be executed, which is the penalty for treason.
The way Trump actually delivered the aforementioned line suggests that he was joking.
If I was the president, I would probably steer clear of joking about veiled death threats, but that’s just me.
Opponents of his impeachment will chalk this up to just being a part of his usual antics, but we cannot allow a president to make jokes like this and get away with it unscathed.
The official and unclassified version of the whistleblower’s complaint document said, “White House officials had intervened to ‘lock down’ all records of the phone call, especially by official word-for-word transcript of the call that
was produced.”
While a portion of the call was released, it was suggested in the complaint that the entirety of the transcript is not currently public.
The “Memorandum of telephone conversation” as it was called, said the call lasted half an hour on the morning of July 25.
It seems highly unlikely that all 30 minutes were made public, seeing as only five pages of transcript text were released. It tells me that portions of the call were definitely swept under the rug.
In some respects, Trump put this controversy on himself.
He presumably authorized the release of the so-called transcript thinking it would end this particular scandal, when instead, it added fuel to the fire.
One of the more damning things to have happened was Trump freezing nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine just days before the call he had with Zelensky, according to a Washington Post story.
Because of this, it’s possible that Trump is in violation of the Hobbs Act, an anti-extortion law.
In the released portion of the call, Trump used the word “favor” when asking for Zelensky to look into Biden.
If Trump’s grand scheme was to hold back aid to Ukraine in exchange for information on Biden, that could be considered grounds for impeachment.
Despite all of this and unfortunately for the United States, the president has never been removed from office.
Former Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were impeached by the House of Representatives, which only requires a majority vote.
When the motion moves to the Senate, a two-thirds majority vote is required to remove the president from office. The Senate didn’t reach that threshold for either Johnson or Clinton, so they served out the remainder of their terms.
In the case of President Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal, he resigned before the House of Representatives voted on his fate.
Trump has been one to make history, however.
History in the sense that he is the most scandalized president this country has ever seen, and hopefully will ever see, and still somehow continues to run the country. His average approval rating of 40% is the lowest of any modern president, according to the latest Gallup poll.
The one last bit of history that he can throw on top of his tenure is being the first president to be impeached and removed from office.
