The impeachment inquiry of US President Donald Trump, which entered a new and critical phase with the first public hearing in the House of Representatives, will have "potentially historic consequences," a political analyst in Maryland says. RNA - “The stakes are enormously high with the live TV impeachment hearings,” said Myles Hoenig, who ran for Congress in 2016 as a Green Party candidate.
“So much of today’s hearings have a bearing on the [2020 presidential election] campaign,” Hoenig said in an interview with Press TV on Wednesday.
“Each of the candidates will have to make the best case for why their party is pursuing this near-once in a lifetime event, with potentially historic consequences, the removal of a president,” Hoenig added.
Trump faces the most perilous challenge of his three-year presidency as public hearings convened on Wednesday as part of the impeachment probe against him.
The impeachment inquiry into Trump’s actions toward Ukraine reached a crucial point on Wednesday as Democratic Party lawmakers launch their first televised public hearings in Congress as they investigate if the Republican president made an impeachable offense.
US Representative Adam Schiff, a Democratic representing Los Angeles County, California, and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, gaveled open the historic session in a congressional hearing room packed with journalists, lawmakers and members of the public.
Democrats in the House of Representatives plan to prove over several weeks of public hearings that the Republican president abused his office by seeking Ukraine's help for his 2020 reelection campaign.
House Democrats launched an impeachment inquiry against Trump in September after a whistleblower alleged the Republican president pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who had served as a director for Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
The public hearings may pave the way for the Democratic-led House to approve articles of impeachment - formal charges - against Trump.
That would lead to a trial in the Senate on whether to convict Trump of those charges and remove him from office. Republicans control the upper chamber of Congress and have shown little support for Trump’s removal.
Trump says the inquiry is "corrupt" and "illegal," and maintains he did nothing wrong.
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