Donald Trump Tells Friends He May Be Impeached, ‘Alarmed’ By Possibility After Cohen Sentence, Per ‘NBC News’
Just two days after Donald Trump said that he has no concern about impeachment because, he said, “the people would revolt if that happened,” as Inquisitr reported, sources inside the White House say that Trump is extremely worried that Democrats in the House may move to impeach him. His concern has only deepened after his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen not only pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations that he says he was ordered to carry out by Trump but was sentenced to three years in prison for the violations and other crimes, the sources say.
The White House sources spoke to NBC News for a new report on Thursday, in which three people close to Trump say he has become “alarmed” by the realization that impeachment has now become a real possibility.
Removing Trump from office as a result of impeachment proceedings, however, remains unlikely, with Republicans continuing to control the Senate and most of those Republicans “remaining steadfastly by his side,” according to the political news site Talking Points Memo. The incoming Senate, which takes office in January, contains 53 Republicans and 47 Democrats including two independents who consistently vote with the Democrats. Removal from office through impeachment would require 67 Senate votes — in other words, every Democrat must vote to convict Trump along with 20 Republicans.
Beyond the Cohen sentencing, Trump’s growing realization that the incoming majority Democrats in the House will be willing to fight him — as Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi demonstrated on Tuesday in a heated, face-to-face showdown with Trump, Inquisitr noted — has him worried about impeachment. In the House, only a majority vote is required to impeach, which would then be followed by a trial in the Senate.
Mounting federal investigations into his close associates both by Russia investigation special counsel Robert Mueller and prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have also caused Trump’s “fear” of impeachment to intensify, the NBC News report said.
On Tuesday, Trump gave an interview to Reuters, saying, “It’s hard to impeach somebody who hasn’t done anything wrong and who’s created the greatest economy in the history of our country. I’m not concerned, no. I think that the people would revolt if that happened.”
But according to federal prosecutors, Trump has in fact done something wrong by ordering Cohen to make the alleged illegal payments. And though the state of the economy has no relevance to impeachment, a study by The Washington Post shows that while it is strengthening, the current United States economy is far from the greatest in the history of the country.
Impeachment proceedings are not triggered by the state of the economy, good or bad, but instead depend only on whether a president is believed to have committed crimes, or as the U.S. Constitution describes, “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Treason and bribery are also specified by the Constitution as grounds for impeachment, according to The Constitutional Rights Foundation.
