Watch Nancy Pelosi Announce a Formal Impeachment Inquiry to the President
Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, after several months hesitating to pull the trigger, announced plans to begin a formal investigation into the impeachment case against President Donald Trump.
“The actions taken so far by the president are in serious breach of the constitution, especially when the president says,“ Article two says I can do whatever I want, ”she said. “… the president needs to be held accountable. Nobody is above the law. “
The news follows Trump’s ties to Ukraine and a call to the country’s president in which Trump attempted to investigate the activities of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, as well as a larger complaint from an informant. (As noted by CNN , the whistleblower has already agreed to testify on an undisclosed date, but may be as early as this week.)
Although Trump agreed to release a transcript of the phone call earlier today, that doesn’t appear to have stopped Pelosi from continuing his investigation.
If you’d like to watch the full performance, CNN will post it toYouTube .
But in order for the impeachment to take place, it is necessary to take several steps . In short, it will most likely be related to an investigation by a House committee that will decide on the articles of impeachment. This is followed by a vote by that committee and a general vote by the House of Representatives on these articles. “When a full house votes on articles of impeachment, if even one gets a majority, the president is impeached, which is essentially the equivalent of being charged,” writes the New York Times .
This is followed by a Senate trial and vote. To get a two-thirds majority, the Senate will have to rely on 20 Republican votes for sentencing, according to CNN, which will likely not be easy. Meanwhile, at the time of this article’s publication, 163 House of Representatives Democrat support the impeachment investigation.