Nancy Pelosi Formally Announces Impeachment Inquiry of Trump

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced at 5 PM on Tuesday that the House will move forward with an impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump.

“Therefore, today I’m announcing the house of representatives moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry,” Pelosi said during her public remarks. “I’m directing our six committees to proceed with their investigations under that umbrella of an impeachment inquiry. The president must be held accountable. No one is above the law.”

The speaker has been slow to back impeachment proceedings against the president over the past few months, even as a majority of Democrats have publicly endorsed the prospect of booting the president from office. However, recent developments that have resulted from a blocked whistleblower’s complaint from the intelligence community have sparked a snowball effect that has apparently convinced the Democrat leader to back the effort.

The complaint that has spurred this moment centers on conversations that Trump had with the Ukrainian president in which Trump allegedly pressured Ukraine to open an investigation into Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his family.

With Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani essentially admitting over the past few days that they’d urged Ukraine to look into Biden, the Washington Post reported on Monday that Trump called on his administration to freeze nearly $400 million of military aid to Ukraine days before his July call with the Ukrainian president.

Trump confirmed on Tuesday that he did withhold aid from Ukraine at the time, but insisted that it was because he wanted to get other NATO countries to chip in. This contradicts what Trump had said on Monday, when he suggested he held back money to Ukraine due to concerns over corruption.