538 "The Midterms Could Set Trump On A Path Toward Impeachment"

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-midterms-could-set-trump-on-a-path-toward-impeachment/

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe is indicting a lot of people at a fast pace, implicating several aides on President Trump’s 2016 campaign. And some legal scholars argue that the president has impeded the investigation into allegations of collusion between the campaign and Russian officials in a way that reaches the threshold of obstructing justice. Still, at the moment, the impeachment of Trump seems far-fetched. For one, Mueller hasn’t accused Trump of anything. Secondly, Republicans control Congress, which has the formal power to impeach and remove a president. And Trump’s party has largely dismissed any suggestion that the president has done something wrong, either during the campaign or since he took office.

But here’s the thing: The conditions are developing for the U.S. House to be considering Trump’s impeachment less than a year from now, even as Democratic Party leaders are actively trying to downplay this possibility. There are four things that clearly would have to happen for the groundwork for Trump’s impeachment to be set. All four are plausible, but none is guaranteed. And two will largely be determined by this fall’s elections.

Keep in mind that we are talking about impeachment, not Trump’s removal from office. Impeachment, which is the equivalent of being indicted, requires a simple majority vote in the House; for a president to be removed from office, two-thirds of the Senate has to vote to do so after holding a trial. That high Senate threshold makes Trump’s ouster much less likely than his impeachment.

Here are the four steps that would put Trump on the path to impeachment:

1. Democrats win control of the House in November
This is the big, obvious factor.

Impeachment in modern times has largely been a partisan process. The House Judiciary Committee’s votes on articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon in 1974 and the vote in the full House against Bill Clinton in 1998 largely fell along party lines. Nixon resigned before the full House, then controlled by the Democrats, could vote to impeach him. About 25 years later, a House in Republican hands successfully pushed through two articles of impeachment against Clinton, over the objections of most congressional Democrats.


snip - more more - read it all at the above link.,

(Oh, please, let it be! Perhaps Mueller's magic will work so soon that we won't have to depend on this)