Just after 8 a.m. on Tuesday, September 24, 2019, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was in her Georgetown apartment, getting ready for the day that was going to be like no other in her long career. This was the day she would formally, officially, finally announce that the House was opening the impeachment inquiry against President Trump.
The California Democrat had resisted calls for impeachment from the left flank of her party for months. As the speaker, the one making the decision, Pelosi had to keep calibrating the risks. There was a risk to doing something, and a risk to doing nothing. She didn’t want to tolerate presidential misconduct. But she also didn’t want the House, or her party, to be seen as taking away the voters’ power to decide Trump’s fate. An impeachment couldn’t be personal, she kept telling her leadership team, or about policy differences. It had to be careful, fair, and easy for the American people to understand to avoid a severe backlash in an already deeply divided nation. As much as many of Trump’s actions appalled her, she had not seen an ironclad, public-unifying offense among them.
But now she had come to believe that Trump had abused his power on a July 25 phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, in which he had suggested Ukraine open investigations that would benefit Trump personally — including one into his chief political rival, former vice president Joe Biden. Continue reading.