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Trump impeachment move ‘politically dangerous’ for Dems: Analyst

Myles Hoenig

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats have taken a “politically dangerous” measure to impeach President Donald Trump over his controversial call to Ukraine's leader since the action may fail to win support from Congress, an American political analyst and activist in Maryland says.

Pelosi initiated on Tuesday a congressional push for the impeachment of Trump over his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

During the phone conversation, Trump allegedly sought Ukraine’s help to smear the former vice president and current front-runner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, Joe Biden.

Myles Hoenig, who ran for Congress in 2016 as a Green Party candidate, in an interview with Press TV on Thursday said there are so many issues surrounding Trump that would call for impeachment but it is his attempt to derail a political opponent’s campaign for the White House and defeat him that has the Democratic House taking this action.

“A lot of people are saying how politically dangerous this is for the Democrats,” Hoenig said. “Although some who are in swing districts are now coming out in support of Pelosi’s move, the fear for them is that the people will turn on them on Election Day.”

“Like Bill Clinton, Trump could sail smoothly into a 2nd term. What people are forgetting, though, is that the American people, and most of Congress, did not support impeaching [Richard] Nixon until it became too obvious to ignore, and then not supporting impeachment became the liability.”

The political analyst added that, “the transcripts that have just been released are giving justification for the Rubicon that Pelosi and the Democrats have crossed. We don’t know how Trump will react to this as he is not used to such a serious challenge to his ego and credibility. This is most likely the downfall of the Trump presidency. But that’s been said so many times in the past.”

The speaker of the US House of Representatives authorized on Tuesday the beginning of a formal impeachment inquiry, saying Trump "must be held accountable" for his actions.

Trump reportedly urged Zelensky about eight times during the phone call to work with his lawyer Rudy Giuliani to investigate government corruption involving Biden and his son, Hunter.

The US president dismissed the Ukraine allegations as another witch-hunt attempting to smear his already tarnished reputation and damage his popularity as the Americans get closer to the 2020 presidential election.

Biden has repeatedly lashed out at Trump for the scandal, denouncing it as an “abuse of power” that could lead to impeachment based on the House’s findings.

Under the US Constitution, the House has the power to impeach a president for “high crimes and misdemeanors” and the Senate then holds a trial on whether to remove the president from office.

No US president has ever been removed from office through impeachment.

A House committee has already launched a formal impeachment probe into Trump over his campaign team’s alleged links to the Russian government in the 2016 US elections, which failed to win support of key party figures.


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