Donald Trump Impeachment: US President In A Mess

The second week of the U.S. impeachment inquiry of Donald Trump kicked off on Tuesday, with four current and former United States officials giving their testimonies. The makeup of Tuesday’s House Intelligence impeachment hearings could have been good, but it turned out to be a disaster for both Trump and his Republican allies.

The House Intelligence Committee heard from two Democrat witnesses on Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence’s special adviser Jennifer Williams and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council official who listened in on Trump’s call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, which prompted the whistle-blower complaint that eventually led to the impeachment inquiry.

The witnesses confirmed that Trump twisted U.S. foreign policy by taking advantage of military aid to force Ukraine to open an investigation into the Biden family. Former U.S. special envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker, who testified during the second hearing, claimed that Trump’s behavior towards the Biden case was shadier than he had thought.

At the core of the ongoing impeachment inquiry was a phone call that Trump made on July 25, in which he pressed Zelensky to probe into Biden and his son in an attempt to gain political advantage over the former U.S. Vice President and top presidential hopeful. During the call, Donald Trump pivoted from a discussion of the U.S. military aid to Ukraine to asking Zelensky to “do him a favor” and investigate Burisma, the Ukrainian company that had Biden’s son Hunter on the board. Later on, it was determined that it was not Russia but Ukraine that had interfered in the 2016 U.S. election, which was won by Trump.

In his testimony, Vindman said he found Trump’s July 25 call quite concerning. “I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen, and I was worried about the implications for the U.S. government’s support of Ukraine,” he said.

While the testimonies of the Democrat witnesses on Tuesday’s hearings made Trump look awful, the Republicans on the intelligence committee failed to present a consistent and compelling counter narrative. Instead of contesting the facts presented by the Williams and Vindman, they attacked the media and the whistleblower instead.

“Trump did what Democrats are accusing him of doing,” Vox noted. “The only issue is whether congressional Republicans are willing to punish him for it.”