Speaker Nancy Pelosi formally announced an impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump after explosive revelations that he withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Ukraine and pressured the Ukrainian President to investigate his top political rival in exchange for him releasing the aid.
The reason Trump withheld the aid is because he wanted Ukraine to investigate a widely discredited conspiracy theory that former Vice President Joe Biden pressured the former top prosecutor in Ukraine to drop an investigation into a company that his son was on the board of. While there is and always has been zero proof or evidence that Joe Biden did anything of the sort, President Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, have spent months saying otherwise. We now know that Trump went one step further than suggesting Ukraine reopen the investigation and actually ordered the freezing of hundreds of millions of dollars in aid under the guise of an "interagency process,” but reporting now proves that is not true. In fact, Trump froze the aid because he wanted to pressure the new Ukrainian President to investigate one of his top political rivals, which would be a clear-cut case of bribery and one of the specific acts the Constitution states a President can be impeached for.
While many Democrats have been calling for a formal impeachment inquiry for some time, Speaker Pelosi has heretofore resisted initiating one out of fear that the American public wasn't on board, but that began to change after a bombshell report that a whistleblower filed a formal complaint against Trump and that the Justice Department moved to prevent Congress from obtaining the whistleblower's report despite the law clearly stating that it must hand it over to Congress. Pelosi began quietly meeting with top Congressional Democrats to see where they stood on opening an official inquiry and eventually came around to supporting one.
To be clear - an impeachment inquiry is the first step in the impeachment process and it by no means guarantees that Trump is in imminent danger of being removed from office. However, it is a critical first step in the drive to hold the President accountable for his alleged illegal and impeachable acts. It will now be in the hands of the Congressional committees conducting the impeachment inquiry to determine whether or not to formally impeach Trump. If they do then he will be tried in the Senate, where a 2/3 majority must vote to convict him for him to be removed from office.
You can watch her full speech below: