2017 Predictions: Donald Trump Could Face Impeachment Within Months Of His Inauguration Due To His Business Conflicts

The year 2017 could bring major turmoil for Donald Trump, with predictions that he could be impeached within months — or even weeks — after taking office if he does not take steps to resolve his business conflicts.

Trump has raised concerns over how he might be able to serve as president while still holding a close connection to his Trump Organization, and critics say he doesn’t show any care about resolving the conflicts. Trump said he will outline a plan for how his business will operate, but backed out of a press conference and still hasn’t provided details.

In the past, Trump has said that his adult children will run the company, but that falls short of the blind trust that other presidents have used and legal experts say Trump must establish in order to fully divest himself from his company. And Trump has already stirred on controversy after his daughter Ivanka, one of the ones supposedly taking over the company, sat in on meetings with foreign leaders.

And even with just a few weeks left until his inauguration, Donald Trump is still heavily involved in his company including pushing ahead two deals in Indonesia. As the New York Times noted, the line between Donald Trump the businessman and Donald Trump the president-elect is very blurred.

“This stuff is so murky,” Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause, a nonprofit calling on Trump to sell off his businesses, told the outlet.

“It is not going to be clean moving forward. There are going to be complications as these projects move forward.”

The predictions that Donald Trump may face impeachment in 2017 have actually been around for many months, even before his unexpected win on Election Day.

Just after Trump’s victory in November, the Independent delved into the possibility of the president being impeached shortly into his tenure. The report cited a number of legal experts who said Trump’s apparent refusal to resolve his business conflicts would make it impossible for him to act in the country’s best interests.

“Donald Trump could be impeached on his first day in office due to conflicts of interest that would arise from him running the country and maintaining his business at the same time, legal experts have warned.”

The predictions that Donald Trump could be impeached in 2017 stem mostly from his business and its dealings with foreign governments. The U.S. Constitution forbids the president from receiving money from any foreign states, but if Trump does not take proper steps to separate himself from his company, that’s exactly what will be happening.

Steven Schooner, a law professor at George Washington University, told MSNBC that “foreign states basically paying money to the Trump Organization by using their hotels.”

Donald Trump has already gotten in trouble in the lead-up to his inauguration. Legal experts have called on Trump to divest from a new hotel built in Washington, D.C., but he allegedly used it to entertain foreign diplomats, the Independent noted. If that were to continue, Trump would be in violation of the U.S. Constitution when he takes office.

The 2017 prediction that Donald Trump will be impeached could have one major problem — the Republican-controlled Congress. Trump’s own party controls both houses, and Democrats do not have the votes to move forward impeachment hearings without considerable motivation and help from the other side of the aisle. While that could come if Trump were to cross his party, or if Republican suddenly decided that vice president Mike Pence might be better to lead the country, the prospect of impeachment looks murky without what would be a major shift in the political landscape.

[Featured Image by Drew Angerer/Getty Images]