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With renewed calls to impeach President Donald Trump, a number of impeachment petitions have surfaced online. Some are from Democrats and some are from concerned citizens. Here is a look at some of those petitions.
A Number of Impeach Trump Petitions Are Circulating
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One impeachment petition can be found on the Need to Impeach website here. The website lays out the call to impeach Trump and then invites people to sign a petition on this page.
Elizabeth Warren has an impeach Trump petition here on her campaign website. In fact, if you search for impeach Trump petitions, ads for her petition will show up at the top of the Google search. Her page reads: “It’s clear that Donald Trump obstructed an investigation into an attack on America and into his own behavior. Presidents are not above the law, and Congress has a constitutional duty to start impeachment proceedings. Add your name if you agree and call on Congress to take action.”
There’s also a petition on Impeach Trump Now here. So far more than 1.4 million have signed that petition.
In May, national advocacy groups delivered petitions to Congress to impeach Trump that had 10 million signatures, NBC News reported. The petition was spearheaded by MoveOn.org and it included the Need to Impeach online petition.
Another petition is on Change.org. That petition has nearly 300,000 signatures and was started in May.
Action Network also has a petition here, sponsored by the Women’s March. So far this petition has collected 8,776 signatures as of the time of publication.
Impeachment Background: How This Got Started
Political leaders are seeking to know if President Donald Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy into investigating Joe Biden and his family, The Washington Post reported. Some view the possibility as particularly egregious since Biden is running for President against Trump. Biden is currently one of the frontrunners in many polls. Trump, meanwhile, has said that he never said he would only offer military aid if the country investigated Biden.
The phone call where Trump is alleged to have pressured Zelensky occurred in July, The Hill reported. The allegations are that Trump pressured him to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. Around this same time, Trump’s administration froze $250 million in military aid to Ukraine. Trump later released the aid.
Trump spoke with reporters at the United Nations General Assembly and said he never pressured to withdraw aid if the investigations didn’t happen. He “did not make a statement that you have to do this or I’m not going to give you aid,” he told reporters.
This is all connected to a whistleblower complaint that the Trump administration did not hand over to Congress. Joseph Maguire, acting director of national intelligence, has until Thursday to give the whistleblower’s complaint to Congress. Pelosi has said that if the complaint isn’t turned over, this will mark a “new chapter of lawlessness” that will force a “whole new stage of investigation.”
The whistleblower complaint alleged that Trump made an unsettling “promise” to a foreign leader (later reported as Zelensky), Fox News reported. The Washington Post first released the report, saying it was a U.S. intelligence officer who filed the complaint. The Inspector General Michael Atkinson reportedly considered the complaint to be credible and of “urgent concern,” but it was not passed on to Congress. Atkinson wrote that the Director of National Intelligence consulted with the Department of Justice and determined that it didn’t need to be shared with the intelligence committee. Atkinson said he disagreed with but would abide by that decision.
Meanwhile, a person familiar with the whistleblower complaint told Fox News that the whistleblower didn’t have “firsthand knowledge” of the phone call.
Vice President Mike Pence, meanwhile, said on Hannity that all of this is causing people to ignore possible wrongdoing by Biden and his son Hunter, Fox News reported. Pence said: “Everything that our critics in the media are leveling at the president from this phone call … Vice President Joe Biden bragged about — which was a quid-pro-quo — withholding American aid in exchange for a specific action.”
Pence was referring to Biden saying that he had told then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in March 2016 that the U.S. would withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees if the top prosecutor there wasn’t fired. The prosecutor was later fired. The allegations were whether or not they wanted the prosecutor fired because of his probe into a company connected to Hunter Biden. Other countries also wanted the prosecutor gone, Fox News noted.
Trump has said that he will released an unredacted transcript of his phone call that will put the rumors and allegations to rest.
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