The Democrats now have another chance to impeach Trump. Will they take it?

The Democrats now have another chance to impeach Trump. Will they take it? The US President is now vulnerable to investigations from rejuvenated Democrats after midterms wipeout – but the opposition may stop short of trying to remove him from office for an unprecedented third time, writes Joe Sommerlad - Bookmark - CommentsGo to comments Become an Independent member to bookmark this article Already a member? Log in President Donald Trump and the Republican Party were hit by a “Blue Tsunami” in Tuesday’s midterms, looking on in horror as the GOP’s majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate were washed away on a wave of public anger. As of Wednesday morning, the opposition Democrats had picked up 25 additional seats in the House and seven in the Senate, taking them well clear of the 218 and 51 seats they needed to claim the upper hand in the twin chambers of Congress. The results leave an uncharacteristically downtrodden Trump conceding defeat, lashing out at his own candidates and media allies and already looking ahead to the prospect of a Democrat-run legislative making life difficult for him in the final two years of his second term. The newly emboldened Democrats are likely to interpret the outcome as a mandate from an unhappy electorate to go after the Trump administration. They are expected to wield the powers of the congressional committees to launch probes into the president and his inner circle. Trump is already the first American president to be impeached twice, so whether the Democrats will seek to do so again is a natural question. The Republican was first impeached by the Nancy Pelosi-led House in 2019, after a whistleblower reported him for threatening to withhold $400 million in congressionally-approved military aid to Ukraine on an official call with that country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, unless the latter opened an investigation into Joe Biden’s son Hunter’s business dealings in Kyiv. Trump went on to be acquitted in the Senate, a scenario that was repeated when he was impeached for an unprecedented second time after his supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Republicans like Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz have both said they fully expect the Democrats to try for a third impeachment. The betting markets Kalshi and Polymarket are offering odds of 77.2 percent and 80 percent respectively as of Wednesday morning. However, the noise from the other side of the aisle has been much more muted. New Yorker Hakeem Jeffries, who is about to become the first Black speaker of the House, was asked about the prospect by ABC News in September and said only: “We haven’t ruled anything in, and we haven't ruled anything out.” Speaking to The New Yorker’s Political Scene podcast earlier this week, influential Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin was equally cagey, telling host David Remnick impeachment was just one of many “tools” his side might choose to use on the Trump administration. New-minted Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, who just beat Trump favorite Jon Husted, also expressed disapproval during his campaign, saying: “I can’t speak for everybody else but I would not support an impeachment of Trump. There’s just simply no reason for that, no matter what happens in the midterms.” The difficulty of securing a conviction in the Senate – which requires a two-thirds majority to remove a president on grounds of treason, bribery or, more vaguely, “high crimes and misdemeanors” – might well dissuade the Democrats from having another go, even with their enhanced majority, which will see the likes of James Talarico, Abdul El-Sayed and Josh Turek joining the ranks come January. There is also a feeling that impeaching Trump allows him to push a victimization narrative and declare a “witch hunt”. this could ultimately only serve to rally his base around him at a time when it appears to be at its most fractured for a decade, judging by Tuesday’s outcome. “Impeaching Trump is a bad idea,” Matt Bennett, co-founder of Third Way, a centrist Democratic think-tank, told The Times. “I want to be clear that we believe that Trump commits five impeachable offences before breakfast every morning. So this is not a question of his culpability. “This is a question of political reality, and the reality is there’s literally zero chance that he will be removed from office unless he does something even more egregious.” Nevertheless, California Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia, leader of the House Oversight Committee, responded to the midterms triumph with a two-word tweet, “LAWYER UP,” - making his intentions plain. This might be through other means than impeachment, however, with Democrats likely to take an interest in accusations of corruption and personal enrichment leveled against the president. Targeting him at one-remove by impeaching one of his top Cabinet secretaries might also prove a more fruitful avenue, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, for instance, already the subject of articles of impeachment filed by outgoing Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie – and a direct threat from Jeffries. “One of the first things we’re going to do in the majority, we’re going to run Pete Hegseth out of town,” the new speaker said on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania recently. Join our commenting forum Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies Comments