BLANTYRE-(MaraviPost)-Year 2019 has been full of Political turmoils in almost all countries including Malawi. U.S in particular had one story that grabbed many people’s attention.
The impeachment case of U.S 45th president, Donald Trump has been one of the ground breaking stories of the year. This historic movement started early days of september with revelation from House Intelligence Committee that the acting Director of National Intelligence, Jerry Maguire, was withholding a whistleblower complaint against President Donald Trump. California Rep. Adam Schiff who is also the chairman of the committee wrote an inquiry requesting the acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to turn in the complaint.
Schiff was quoted by Business INSIDER USA saying: “A month ago, a whistleblower within the intelligence community lawfully filed a complaint regarding a serious or flagrant problem, abuse, violation of law, or deficiency within the responsibility or authority of the Director of National Intelligence.
The ODNI refused to rule out that the underlying conduct relates to an area of active investigation by the committee, raising serious concerns that the whistleblower complaint is being withheld to protect the President or other Administration officials”.
The complaint detailed how the US president made a call on July 25 pressuring the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter with the purpose of disturbing the 2020 upcoming U.S. election. According to reports, Trump withheld about $400 million military aid from Ukraine, a country that is depending on US assistance to protect itself from Russia in desperate attempt to have Biden and his son on trial.
During the time of the case, multiple diplomats testified under oath against the Trump administration and on December 13, the House Judiciary Committee approved two articles of impeachment. The first article of impeachment charged Trump with abuse of power, and the second with obstruction of Congress.
The House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi who is a democrat presided over the voting process of impeachment which came in after about 10 hours of debate. On December 19, history was made when Trump became the third U.S president to be impeached following impeachment of president Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson. The first article; abuse of power was voted 230 to 197 to 1 and the obstruction of Congress article had 229 to 198 to 1 votes.
Trump’s fate is meanwhile in the hands of the senate which will hold trial where he will either be convicted or acquitted. The House was set to resume on January 7 to vote on appointing impeachment managers, who will present the case before the Senate.
It is expected that if two-thirds (67%) of the senate are to vote yes to the impeachment articles, Trump will be removed from office and his vice president will take over. On the other hand if senate will not convict him, he is expected to stay in office, and it’ll be up to the American people to re-elect him or vote him out of office in 2020.
As the saying goes “Everything with the beginning surely has an ending”, 2020 is here to put this whole case to an end although it is unclear when the Senate will begin the trial and how long it last
