US President Donald Trump said that the charges against him, which should be voted on impeachment, do not hold water.

“Democratic congressmen have put forward two lame, miserable, ridiculous accusations of impeachment,” Trump said, speaking to his supporters in Pennsylvania.

According to the American leader, his opponents publicly signed that "there was no conspiracy, no obstruction of justice, or any crimes whatsoever."

On the eve of the US Congress formally charged Trump, which should pass a vote on impeachment. The President of the United States is charged with "abuse of power" and "obstructing Congress." These allegations were announced by Jerrold Nadler, head of the House Judicial Committee. The corresponding resolution signed by the head of the committee is published on its official website.

Article I, “abuse of power,” refers to Trump’s position in the Ukrainian scandal. It is alleged that the US president tried to exert pressure on the Ukrainian government to announce an investigation that would facilitate his re-election and harm his "political opponent." This is an investigation into Burisma, whose board of directors was the son of former vice president Joe Biden.

The document emphasizes that Trump allegedly sought to “intervene” Ukraine in the presidential election in 2020 and by his actions “threatened US national security”.

In Article II, “Obstructing the Work of Congress,” Trump is blamed for not cooperating with Congress when the House of Representatives initiated the impeachment process. Trump is said to have obstructed the investigation, convincing witnesses not to cooperate, and government agencies to disobey the demands of the House of Representatives.

Stages of a Long Way

According to CNN, the next step in the process of impeachment trump should be a vote on the committee of the House of Representatives on judicial issues, at which members of this body must approve the charges against the president.

It is expected that this procedure may take place this Thursday, December 12, and the committee will approve the draft indictment. If everything goes according to plan, then next week the entire House of Representatives will be able to vote on the issue of impeachment trump.

To impeach the president, a simple majority of votes is enough. However, such an announcement does not mean the removal of the president from power.

As stated in an explanatory note prepared in November by the US Congressional Research Service: the lower house “declares impeachment,” and the task of the upper house is “to organize a hearing to determine whether the defendant should be removed from office.” In this case, specially appointed members of the House of Representatives will act as prosecutors.

The final decision, to remove the president from office or not, will be the Senate. For this, charges against Trump should support 2/3 of the senators. If the House of Representatives will vote for impeachment before Christmas, the process in the upper house, as stated by the leader of the Republican majority in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, will begin immediately after the Christmas holidays - in early January.

Trump is the fourth president in US history, against whom the impeachment process was initiated. Two of the four Democrats, Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton, were impeached in 1998 by the lower house. In both cases, when voting in the Senate, there was not enough votes to remove the presidents from power.

  • Senate hearing on impeachment of President Johnson
  • © US House of Representatives

Another American leader, Republican Richard Nixon, resigned in 1974 against the backdrop of the Watergate scandal, without waiting for a vote on impeachment items in the House of Representatives.

Shaky majority

According to the American media, there is no unanimity among the Democrats in the House of Representatives regarding the impeachment of Trump, while the Republicans rallied around the president.

It is with this factor that CNN associates the fact that Trump has been charged with only two points. For comparison, Bill Clinton was charged on four counts. But more accusations could reduce the number of congressmen willing to vote for impeachment.

There are currently 233 Democrats, 197 Republicans, and one independent congressman in the House of Representatives. 4 places remain vacant.

  • U.S. House of Representatives
  • Reuters
  • © Joshua Roberts

Politico, in turn, notes that at least 10 Democratic members of the House of Representatives are proposing instead to declare impeachment a “resolution to denounce” Trump. Such a document is an officially expressed opinion or point of view of one or both houses of Congress, but it does not imply the removal of the president from office.

As Politico emphasizes, the authors of this idea were elected to Congress from the constituencies that voted for Trump in 2016. They fear that a lengthy process of impeachment in the Senate could lead public opinion in favor of the Republican Party in the last months before the November 2020 elections.

Then, in addition to the president, the Americans will re-elect the full House of Representatives. Places of those Democrats in whose districts the strong Trump sentiment is strong may be in jeopardy.

As Breitbart notes, there are 31 congressional Democrats in the House of Representatives who represent the counties where Trump won in 2016. About 20 more districts belong to the category of those where, in 2020, a tough struggle between the Republicans and the Democrats can take place.

The two Democrats have already voted against initiating the impeachment process and are not expected to approve the allegations against Trump further. To impeach Trump, you will need at least 216 votes - half of all current members of the House of Representatives. That is, it is enough for another 17 Democrats to violate party discipline and vote against the allegations against Trump - and the impeachment announcement will fail.

However, the director of the Franklin Roosevelt Foundation for the Study of the United States at Moscow State University, Yuri Rogulev, believes that the Democrats will still get the required number of votes.

“I think the lower house of congress will vote for impeachment, because she herself composed these charges. Otherwise, they themselves will become the authors of their failure, ”Rogulev said in an interview with RT. “However, how serious these allegations are is a big question.” The US Constitution only determines that impeachment may be committed by a president who has committed a serious crime. But how severe is the phone call to Zelensky and the refusal to recognize the legality of the procedures that lawmakers themselves have established? ”

As political analyst Alexander Asafov said in a conversation with RT, the set of allegations against Trump is "rather strange."

"Obstruction of the Congress from a legal point of view is a very strange and tense accusation," Asafov said. “There will be a show, Democrats are using impeachment in order to get the most negative for Trump.”

"Will be acquitted"

As noted in the White House, President Trump intends to answer the accusations against him only in the upper house of Congress.

"The president will speak out about these false accusations in the Senate and expects that he will be fully acquitted, since he did not commit anything inappropriate," said White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham.

Earlier, the US president expressed his intention not only to speak in the Senate, but also to use the hearing on his impeachment to publicly interrogate Joe and Hunter Biden.

However, the leader of the Republican majority in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, does not exclude that there will not be a long trial with the testimony of witnesses. According to him, it may happen that after members of the House of Representatives and Trump's lawyers express their arguments in the Senate, the Senate will immediately put to the vote the question of removing the president from power.

According to Yuri Rogulev, "the ambiguity of the charges against Trump is their main weakness."

“It is unlikely that the Senate and society as a whole will support the Democrats in their desire to remove Trump on these two charges. They wanted to bring a more serious charge of treason, of betrayal. But, apparently, they decided that they did not have enough facts. And they put forward these two rather weak accusations of what can hardly be considered a serious crime. "

According to the expert, in order to remove Trump, 67 people must vote for this in the Senate. However, of the 100 senators, 53 are Republicans. This means that the chances that the Senate will remove the president from power for the first time in US history are close to zero.

  • Mitch McConnell
  • Reuters
  • © Erin Scott

However, Asafov is not so sure of a favorable outcome for Trump.

“It is difficult to say whether the Senate will vote for impeachment. There is no monolithic position. I think that backstage negotiations are also going on. I would refrain from forecasts, ”the political scientist said.

In turn, Yuri Rogulev believes that the next stage of the impeachment process could play into the hands of the current US president.

“The impact of this impeachment on the 2020 elections will be minimal. However, Senate hearings can affect the fate of Joe Biden, finally burying his political career. And this will only facilitate Trump’s task in the election, ”concluded Yuri Rogulev.