On July 25, 2019,  President Trump made a phone call that changed the course of his presidency. This was the start of his impeachment scandal. The phone call sparked an impeachment inquiry into the president starting on September 24. In our recurring political feature, The Gator’s Eye will try to keep you up to date on this on-going political story and answer the questions you may have about the impeachment reports you’re hearing on the news.

But first, some backstory.

According to The Washington Post, the call that sparked all of the inquiry was to Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky concerning Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. A rough transcript of the call was released by the White House. Basically, the call was Trump asking Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden and Joe Biden at the threat of withholding $400 million in military aid. What did Trump ask them to investigate? Well, that’s a whole other story.

According to USA Today, When Joe Biden was vice-president during Obama’s investigation, he got a Ukraine prosecutor who was accused of corruption fired. This by itself is normal; the problem was that the prosecutor was investigating a company that had ties to Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. This led some people to believe that there were hidden motives behind getting the prosecutor fired. However, even if there could have been hidden motives, Trump withholding the military aid would still be illegal. According to Just Security, this is because the Constitution gives the “power of the purse” to Congress giving them the authority to make budgetary decisions. The illegality of Trump withholding money sparked the impeachment inquiry into Trump.

The Trump impeachment inquiries are a huge ongoing event that could change the political landscape of our country in a huge way. Now you know what started them. Next week, we’ll go more in-depth about what’s going on with the impeachment inquiries.

In the meantime, we’d like to know: do you think President Trump should be impeached?