The impeachment inquiry hearings into President Donald Trump’s unethical dealings with Ukraine are underway.
Watch the impeachment hearing live in the below YouTube stream:
As ESSENCE previously reported, House Democrats are looking for answers as to whether Trump used Ukraine’s vulnerability to the Russian invasion against them.
The transcript of a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky confirm that the U.S. president pressed Zelensky to investigate former Vice-President and 2020 Democratic presidential front runner Joe Biden. Trump continues to insist that nothing unethical was discussed during the conversation; nor, he claimed, was the phone call itself problematic.
A recent CNN poll found that U.S. citizens are split along partisan lines on if the inquiry should move forward.
According to the poll, 49% of Americans indicated that Trump should be impeached and removed from office, while 47% indicated that he should not be impeached.
Of that number, 82% of Democrats support removing Trump from office, while 13% are against it. Eighteen percent of Republicans back removing Trump, while 82% oppose it. Independents are more evenly split, with 47% backing impeachment and 49% against it.
Trump, who has repeatedly called the impeachment inquiry a “witch hunt,” a “fraud,” a “coup,” and recently, a “lynching,” is responding to the inquiry hearings in real-time on Twitter. Democrats have accused him of witness tampering and intimidation, as he attacked Marie Yovanovitch, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, while she testified.