House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will announce a formal impeachment inquiry into President
Donald Trump, according to the Wall Street Journal and
Washington Post.The most senior Democrat in
Congress had been the biggest obstacle to opening a full impeachment inquiry by a vote in the House of Representatives.
She had previously argued that a fully empowered impeachment inquiry into Trump would be divisive, distract from the Democrats’ agenda and force recently elected politicians to take a vote that could upset swing voters.
But then came news that Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to open an investigation into 2020
Democratic presidential candidate
Joe Biden and the former vice president’s son Hunter Biden while withholding military aid approved for the country.
This request for foreign intervention in the 2020
election, and the potential act of bribery, pushed Pelosi over the edge.
After the new revelations about the president’s wrongdoing emerged, more and more Democratic lawmakers joined calls for Congress to open a full impeachment inquiry.
These newly pro-impeachment lawmakers included 11 freshmen members, including a handful from districts that Trump won in 2016.
“These new allegations are a threat to all we have sworn to protect,” seven freshmen lawmakers wrote in an op-ed for The
Washington Post on Tuesday.
“We must preserve the checks and balances envisioned by the Founders and restore the trust of the
American people in our government.”
Calls for impeaching Trump began in earnest after the April 18 release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on
Russian interference in the 2016 election.
While the report did not find any criminal acts in Trump’s and his campaign’s efforts to encourage Russian interference in the election, it did outline multiple efforts made by the president to obstruct the investigation.This is a breaking news story and will be updated. Follow HuffPost
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