12-6-19 articles of impeachment

A retired Ripon College political science professor says he is not surprised that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced the House is moving forward to draft articles of impeachment against president Donald Trump.   Pelosi delivered the historic announcement Thursday from the speaker’s offices at the Capitol.  Political scientist Marty Farrell says it is interesting that Trump tweeted if Democrats are going to impeach him, he wants them to “do it now, fast” so he can get on to a Senate trial.  “The president I guess wants it out of the way as quickly as possible and then can try to use it in his re-election campaign when it fails, which he’s confident it will,”  Farrell told WFDL news.  At the heart of the impeachment probe is a July call with the president of Ukraine, in which Trump pressed the leader to investigate Democratic political rival Joe Biden as Trump waswithholding aid to the country.     But Farrell says as of now there is no evidence the president directly said he was going  to withhold military aid to Ukraine for the purpose of pressuring them into announcing an investigation into the Bidens.  “We don’t have him  (Trump)  explicitly saying that.  All the other diplomats who testified, that was the assumption they were all going under.  Do you need that?  Or is the circumstantial evidence enough to prove a preponderance of the evidence?”