President Donald Trump’s call to the president of Ukraine to investigate potential corruption of Joe Biden’s son has initiated the early stages of impeachment and possible removal of the president. In this call, Trump was alleged to have used military funding that was supposed to go to Ukraine as leverage against the Ukrainian President in order to make him investigate corruption claims related to Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. This is one of the many events that has led to calls for impeachment, and Trump has previously been under fire for alleged misuse of campaign funds in order to pay off actress Stormy Daniels and questions related to his knowledge of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

The Ukraine calls are the most recent scandal of the Trump administration. They were first reported by an anonymous whistleblower from within the White House. The whistleblower has stated that the president has used his power in order to get favors from foreign governments to reassure his reelection in 2020. The whistleblower also describes concern within the White House that the president is grossly misusing his power in order to dig up dirt on democratic party nominees. The report has led Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to launch a democrat led investigation into wrongdoing by the president. While impeachment is merely the process to remove the president and not actual removal, it does show there is sufficient evidence of crimes committed by the president of the united states. However, while the house only needs half of representative to begin the impeachment inquiry, the Senate needs a two thirds majority in order to remove the president from office, which is unlikely because the senate is currently majority republican. Impeachment has only gotten to the Senate two times, and both times the presidents were not removed from office.

These circumstances make it highly unlikely that the president will be removed from office, but the impeachment proceedings may be a way to discredit the trust of an already unpopular president. Recent polling suggests that over half of United States citizens support impeaching and removing the president from office. However, most republicans would not support impeachment, and there are arguments over whether or not the call to the president of Ukraine directly violated any laws. Trump and the White House continue to insist that the call for investigation into Hunter Biden and the withholding of funding to Ukraine are unrelated, but the whistleblower has said that Trump wanted the Ukrainian president to negotiate with him in order to gain leverage over a political opponent.

While the impeachment proceedings are in very early stages, the investigation will reveal if the president is guilty of any crimes and due for a trial. While removal from office is unlikely, the storm of alleged wrongdoing by the investigation may be detrimental to Donald Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign, the very thing he sought to prevent.