Is President Trump Being Impeached?

The impeachment inquiry for President Donald J. Trump was issued on September 24th of this year. At some point, everyone has heard of this mini battle being fought, either feeling relieved or frustrated, but the entirety of this issue brings up something to clarify, which is answering the question of what exactly impeachment is. The basic definition would be “the action of calling into question the integrity or validity of something”(Lexico), while the definition primarily associated with the United States is “a charge of misconduct made against the holder of a public office”(Lexico). After hearing of the many cases of misconduct from the man in the big seat himself, it can be assumed that there is good reason for the impeachment inquiry to some degree.

There have been a number of acts that President Trump has carried out with unintended effects while in office. Namely, one in particular would be the fact that many nations that have come by to visit during Trump’s presidency have deliberately rented out and stayed in rooms of his personal, opulent hotel in Washington in hopes of receiving favors as a nation, in exchange for the personal money he would receive as a business owner, with his power as our president. Although this particular habitual series of acts does not appear to be incredibly mortifying, it does supposedly infringe upon the emoluments section of the Constitution and any form of violation as such should not be taken lightly. This act, among many others, however, was not the final reason for the inquiry.

The act that truly triggered the impeachment inquiry was the pressuring of the Ukrainian president into a relationship with President Trump where President Trump practically blackmailed President Volodymyr Zelensky by withholding heavyweight U.S. military aid, about four hundred million dollars worth, to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden on July 25th, of this year.

The current situation on the impeachment inquiry is that, as of now, the vote ratio for continuing to pursue impeachment is 232 to 196 in the House of Representatives, with no Republicans having voted on impeaching President Trump. Of course, in order to continue with the impeachment the representatives in support of the process will need to testify and tackle the issue as their pursuit resumes.