US President Donald Trump decries impeachment inquiry announcement via Twitter.
Twitter was the first to catch the wind of a raging storm now hitting the US: A Trump impeachment enquiry is underway as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on Tuesday that the House of Representatives is pressing forward with an impeachment inquiry US President Donald Trump.
This follows recent reports revealed that the President had allegedly ‘pressured’ Ukraine to investigate 2020 Democratic presidential election hopeful Joe Biden (and family) – a notion that he confirmed, then denied.
In response to this, the US president took to his Twitter page as usual and declared “PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT’ to decry the claims now mounting as threats to the future of his government and ultimately his place as president of the United States. His Tweet has received more than 37000 retweets and sparking up several hundreds of threads all connected to the case for impeachment of the president.
The journey to impeachment began dramatically last week when a rather mysterious report from a whistleblower surfaced.
News media outlet Washington Post reported the incident saying that the President had telephone communication with a foreign leader which involved a promise that was so troubling that they filed a whistleblower complaint to the Inspector General in a bid to warn US intelligence officials.
At the time of the publication, Washington Post claims that it does not know who the
whistleblower is or has details of the particular foreign leader named by the report.
However, since a whistleblower can potentially be anyone with any kind of specific interest the breaking news was simply an indication that someone in the intelligence community speculated ‘fowl-play’ and reported Trump for his engagement with the foreign leader.
It has since been revealed that the foreign leader is Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and that the nature of the telephone engagement highlighted that Trump threatened to hold back military aid to Ukraine if its leaders failed to investigate former vice-president Joe Biden.
The President was accused at the time of his call the US administration under his watch was withholding up to 250 million US Dollars in military aid to Ukraine which Congress had already approved.
If reports going by prove to be true the coming days might prove catastrophic for the Trump government and the President himself given that this is deemed an outright abuse of power, extortion and a direct attempt to involve a foreign nation in the affairs of the US and its upcoming Presidential elections – a claim that already exists around Trump and his controversial victory at the 2016 presidential polls for which Russia is pointed as a key instrument used for manipulating the US elections in favour of the President.
It may be interesting to consider the impact of the developing story on Ukraine and how a country in the middle of a war against Russian invasion might attempt to cope with being named-called on Trump’s impeachment enquiry while remaining expectant of military aid for supporting combat from a nation that is now growing upset with the Ukrainian relationship with its President.
Trump has however dismissed the reports and even boldly stated in his string of Tweets that he understands many people listen to his phone conversations with foreign leaders, asking rather furiously:
“Is anybody dumb enough to beleive that I would say something inappropriate on such a potentially heavily populated call?”
In response to claims that he withheld military aid to Ukraine in a bid to force its government to do his bidding the US President has responded saying that the United States has paid the aid money to Ukraine and that any delay encountered was because Europe and other nations were not contributing:
“Just the United States. We’re putting up the bulk of the money. And I’m asking why is that? Why is it only the United States putting up the money?” Trump asked while speaking with press at the United Nations on Tuesday.
Strong comments that fueled speculations on the nature of his telephone conversation with the President of Ukraine came directly from Trump who first claimed in a brief with newsmen via ABC:
“The conversation I had was largely congratulatory, was largely corruption – all of the corruption taking place – was largely the fact that we don’t want our people like Vice President Biden and his son creating to the corruption already existing in the Ukraine”.
This was followed with more comments admitting to bringing up Biden in the phone conversation while speaking at the United Nations: “There was no pressure whatsoever – but there was pressure put on with respect to Joe Biden – what Joe Biden did for his son, that’s something they should be looking at”.
Here Trump’s unconfirmed claim is that while Joe Biden was Vice President under the Obama led administration, he pressured Ukraine to fire their top prosecutor because the prosecutor was investigating a Ukrainian company in which Biden’s son was a board member.
Even with one of the odds being that Biden might be guilty of the claims the President is making, it would still mean that Trump violated the law and stepped out line to dig up dirt on the now Presidential hopeful and Trump’s political opponent, Joe Biden. This alone amounts to abuse of power and only a probing investigation like an inquiry into the whistleblower complaints can shed more light on the muddle.
In the meantime, the US Congress has issued a Thursday deadline to the Trump government to receive the whistleblower complaint as is required by law.
However, some media outlets have reported claims that the White House and the Justice department advised Intel Chief to withhold the whistleblower complaint from Congress thereby evoking more speculations on the subject.
Trump has since gathered top tier video reactions from several leading US officials calling for his impeachment and curated into a short promotional video in which he addresses his loyalists and advises openly that: ‘It is time to stop this nonsense, they (referring to Democrats) think they’re going to win.”
He called it a compliment that the opposition are now doing everything in their power to ensure that he is not reelected come 2020, saying that it has resulted in the Republicans having the best poll numbers that they have ever had: “It’s crazy, its crazy” He repeated.
The world can now expect more twists, turns and revelations in the coming days – or even minutes, given the obvious close relationship between Trump’s fingers and his easy to use Twitter keyboard.
