26 Time October 7, 2019
me,” says Dean Phillips, a moderate fresh-
man Congressman from Minnesota who
came out for impeachment on Sept. 23,
Trump’s behavior “was so egregious and
beyond the pale, and so cut and dried,
that there was no alternative.”
The White House denounced im-
peachment proceedings as baseless. The
Democrats’ “attacks on the President
and his agenda are not only partisan and
pathetic, they are in dereliction of their
constitutional duty,” White House press
secretary Stephanie Grisham said. The
President’s political team predicts he will
benefit from the fight. “Democrats have
wanted to overturn the legitimate results
of the 2016 election ever since President
Trump was elected,” says Tim Murtaugh,
the Trump campaign’s director of com-
munications. “They’ve always wanted to
impeach him, and they’ve just been shop-
ping around for an excuse.”
Plenty of Democrats remain wary of
the politics. “There’s definitely a feel-
ing that people are rushing into it be-
fore they’ve gotten all the necessary in-
formation,” says a House Democrat who
has not called for an impeachment in-
quiry. “I don’t take away from anyone
else who’s arrived at the decision that
they’ve arrived at. But they don’t hold an
ethical high ground on this. It is a per-
fectly rational, perfectly ethical decision
to say, ‘I’m going to wait and hear out
the facts.’”
Pelosi’s announcement signaled
an official imprimatur more than any
material change to the congressional in-
vestigations that are already looking at
the President’s financial dealings and
building a public case around alleged
corruption. The Constitution leaves it
up to Congress to make its own way on
impeachment. In the past, the House
first voted to move forward with the im-
peachment process.
whaT is cerTain is that the President
is about to be put on trial in a whole
new way. The Democrats’ investiga-
tions have taken on a heightened level
of seriousness, visibility and focus. If
the allegations are firmly supported by
evidence, articles of impeachment will
be drawn up and put to a vote of the
Democratic- controlled House. A major-
ity vote sends them to the Republican-
controlled Senate, where the two-thirds
bar for conviction and removal has al-
ways proven prohibitively high. (In
1868, President Johnson escaped con-
viction by a single vote.) Trump has
assumed Republicans will stand by his
side to the bitter end, and that has been
the case so far. Most GOP Senators who
spoke to TIME said they considered the
Ukraine allegations mere hearsay, or
tried to change the subject to insinua-
tions about Biden.
But impeachment proponents pre-
dict things could be different once
Republicans are under pressure to take
a side, with history (and swing-state vot-
ers) watching. Senator Mitt Romney of
Utah has said Trump’s alleged actions
would be “deeply troubling” if they took
place. On Sept. 24, the Senate called for
the release of the whistle- blower com-
plaint in a unanimous, bipartisan vote.
For months, the sense in Washington
has been that impeachment would be a
political loser for the Democrats, but that
conventional wisdom seems to be bend-
ing too. GOP strategist Brendan Buck says
he now believes a corruption- focused im-
peachment proceeding has the potential
to damage Trump politically, if Demo-
crats “focus on this simple-to- understand
transgression: the President [allegedly]
sought assistance from a foreign leader
to affect our election.”
The process is likely to drag on into
the heat of a fiercely competitive Dem-
ocratic presidential primary. Iowa and
New Hampshire will cast the first votes
in February. Biden’s campaign hopes the
scandal will cause voters to rally around
the well-liked former veep. But some
advisers worry it could damage him by
putting “Biden” and “corruption” in the
headlines, sowing doubts among voters.
For Spanberger, the time has come
to pursue the truth, whatever the poli-
tics may be. “I believe that my voters
elected me because they thought that I
would lead with integrity,” she tells TIME
as the sun sets over the Capitol. “I think
anybody, regardless of party, should
want to get to the bottom of these allega-
tions.” —With reporting by charloTTe
alTer/new york; simon shusTer/
berlin; and alana abramson, brian
benneTT, Tessa berenson, vera
bergengruen, philip ellioTT,
lissandra villa and john walcoTT/
washingTon •Nation
TheUkrainecall
During a 30-minute
call on July 25,
President Trump
asked Ukraine’s
leader Volodymyr
Zelensky to help U.S.
Attorney General
Bill Barr investigate
Joe Biden. He also
wanted Zelensky
to help Barr and
Trump’s personal
lawyer Rudy Giuliani
look into the origins
of the investigation
into Russian election
interference. Below
are excerpts from
Trump’s side of the
call, according to
the White House
summary that Trump
ordered declassified.1
2
3
- “The United States
has been very very good to Ukraine.
I wouldn’t say that it’s reciprocal
necessarily because things are
happening that are not good.” - “I would like you to do us a favor
though because our country has been
through a lot and Ukraine knows a
lot about it ... I would like to have the
Attorney General call you or your people
and I would like you to get to the bottom
of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole
nonsense ended with a very poor
performance by a man named Robert
Mueller, an incompetent performance,
but they say a lot of it started with
Ukraine.” - “The other thing, there’s a lot of talk
about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped
the prosecution and a lot of people want
to find out about that so whatever you
can do with the Attorney General would
be great.”