A majority of the House now supports some form of impeachment inquiry, reaching the magic number that could be decisive in impeaching Trump

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• A majority of the House of Representatives — 218 members — now supports either an impeachment inquiry or the impeachment of President Donald Trump. The 218 members are all Democrats except for Rep. Justin Amash, who's an independent from Michigan.
• A simple majority vote is required to impeach a president. If this happens, the process moves on to a public trial in the Senate, where a two-thirds majority vote would be necessary to convict. 
• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the launch of a formal impeachment inquiry on Tuesday. This came as Trump is embroiled in a scandal linked to a whistleblower complaint from an intelligence official.
• The complaint has been tied to a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which Trump urged Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden.
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There are now 218 members of Congress backing either an impeachment inquiry or the impeachment of President Donald Trump, both NBC News and Politico reported.

This is a significant threshold given it's the number of votes that would be necessary to impeach Trump in the House (a simple majority out of the 435 members). If that occurred a public trial would then take place in the Senate, which would be presided over by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. A two-thirds majority vote in the Senate would ultimately be necessary to convict Trump and remove him from office.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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See Also:

• Democrats and Republicans have such opposite spins on Trump's call with the Ukrainian president it's like they read 2 different transcripts
• The US's top spy agency referred the Trump whistleblower complaint to the DOJ for criminal investigation. The DOJ decided not to investigate.
• 'I stayed at the Trump Tower': Ukrainian president's call with Trump shows how far world leaders can go to massage his ego

SEE ALSO: Meet Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine's comedian turned president who's at the center of the scandal threatening Trump's presidency

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