Impeachment probe goes public

Televised hearings mark new, high-stakes phase of Trump inquiry

WASHINGTON: The impeachment inquiry into US President Donald Trump is set to reach a critical juncture with lawmakers launching their first televised public hearings, marking a new, high-stakes phase of a tumultuous presidency.

Democrats leading the US House of Representatives probe summoned three US diplomats – all of whom have previously expressed alarm in closed-door testimony about Trump’s dealings with Ukraine – to detail their concerns under the glare of wall-to-wall news coverage yesterday.

Trump’s fellow Republicans, who will also be able to question the witnesses, have crafted a defence strategy arguing that he did nothing wrong when he asked Ukraine’s new president to investigate Joe Biden, a former vice-president and key 2020 re-election rival.

Both sides will be playing to a sharply polarised electorate as they move deeper into a six-week-old investigation that has shadowed Trump’s presidency with the threat of being removed from office, even as he campaigns for a second term.

It has been two decades since

Americans last witnessed impeachment proceedings against a president, and these will be the first of the social media era.

Republicans, who then controlled the House, brought impeachment charges against Democratic president Bill Clinton in a scandal involving his sexual relationship with a White House intern. The Senate voted to keep Clinton in office.

Though no president has ever been removed from office by impeachment, that has not deterred Democrats, who are looking into whether Trump abused his power by withholding nearly US$400mil (RM1.6bil) in security aid to Ukraine to pressure the vulnerable US ally.

The focus is a July 25 phone call in which Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to open a corruption probe into Biden and his son and into a discredited theory that Ukraine may have meddled in the 2016 US elections.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing, derided some of the current and former US officials who have appeared before committees as “Never Trumpers” and branded the investigation a witch hunt. “President Trump’s pressure campaign was ‘out of bounds’ and every time he insists that it was ‘perfect’, he is saying that he is above the law,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Twitter, referring to how the president has described his actions in the Ukraine saga.

With a potential television audience of tens of millions looking on, two witnesses – William Taylor, top US diplomat in Ukraine, and deputy assistant secretary of state George Kent – were set to be sworn in before the House Intelligence Committee yesterday.