The impeachment procedure for Donald Trump took a new step on Wednesday, December 4, with the first hearing of the Committee on Legal Affairs. After the investigation conducted by the Intelligence Committee, it is up to him to write the articles on which elected officials will eventually have to decide.
Four Constitutionalists were invited to comment on the legitimacy of an impeachment by the President of the United States, three invited by the Democratic majority and the last by the Republican minority. This division has fueled the trench warfare climate that has prevailed almost since the beginning of the Ukrainian affair.
It will be remembered that she left a phone call between Donald Trump and his counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, on July 25. During the meeting, the US president had asked his interlocutor to open investigations against his political opponents, including former Democratic Vice President Joe Biden, the presidential candidate for the 2020 presidential election.
Witnesses heard in previous weeks have confirmed that significant military assistance and an invitation to the White House have been contingent upon this request. The Intelligence Committee concluded in a report adopted by the only votes Democrats, Tuesday, that "The president has placed his personal and political interests above national interests, sought to undermine the integrity of the US electoral process and endangered national security ".
Procedure adapted to the incriminated facts
If serenity was expected at Wednesday's hearings, which stretched throughout the day, this hope was quickly disappointed. Unsurprisingly, the three constitutionalists chosen by the Democrats unanimously felt that the procedure was adapted to the incriminated facts. "If we can not indict a president who uses his power for personal ends, we no longer live in a democracy, we live in a monarchy or a dictatorship "Assured Noah Feldman, who teaches at Harvard.
According to him, the drafters of the Constitution provided for the impeachment procedure precisely as a protection against the use of a foreign power to influence the course of American democracy. After recalling how much this concern had haunted the founding fathers, including George Washington, Pamela Karlan, a Stanford professor, assured that "The very idea that a president could ask for help from a foreign government in his re-election campaign would have horrified him. But based on the evidence we have, that's what President Trump did ". "If what we are talking about does not deserve an indictment, then nothing can justify it "said his colleague Michael Gerhardt, a professor at the University of North Carolina.
