In short, this impeachment of Trump?

On June 25, 1973, John Dean testified to the US Senate committee dealing with impeachment against President Richard Nixon. Until a few months earlier, Dean had been Nixon's principal legal advisor, who had fired him when he learned of his willingness to cooperate with parliamentary committees investigating the Watergate case. That day in 1973, Dean became the first member of the Nixon administration to say that the president had been directly involved in espionage operations against the Democratic Party and subsequent attempts to cover them up. Dean did not present evidence – it was his word against that of Nixon – but his accusations later found many concrete confirmations; above all, however, his testimony resonated very much in public opinion, contributing to the deterioration of Nixon's reputation that would have brought him more or less a year later to his resignation, after being abandoned by his own party.

Several US newspapers are now writing that the impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump could have had his "John Dean moment" on Wednesday, but things are more complicated than that.

The man who testified yesterday before the House investigation committee is Gordon Sondland, US ambassador to the European Union. Sondland is not a career diplomat, or one who may be suspected of sympathizing with his opponents: he is a wealthy hotel entrepreneur who has long been linked to the Republican Party, and has donated a million dollars to the committee that organized the inauguration ceremony of Trump: in US politics it is a practice that the rich financiers of those who become president are somehow rewarded with diplomatic assignments in nations and regions that do not involve large and delicate foreign policy issues, especially in Europe. Just a few days ago Trump himself he had called Sondland "A really good man and a great American," adding that he would have loved to hear his testimony, of course he would have exonerated him.

Instead it didn't happen. During his testimony, Sondland confirmed everything that was already known about the case that led to the opening of the impeachment procedure, adding still unknown elements and details that further aggravate the position of Trump and other important figures of the US government.

The story as we know it today is this, in a nutshell: between the spring and the summer of this year the president Donald Trump put pressure on the newly elected president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, to open an investigation that would damage one of his main political rivals, Joe Biden, taking advantage of the assignment obtained by Biden's son, Hunter, on the board of directors of a Ukrainian company (the accusations against the Biden are groundless). The pressure exerted by Trump used the strength and tools of the presidency and US foreign policy: Trump explicitly made his request to Zelensky during a formal phone call from the Oval Office, after blocking a tranche of direct economic and military aid to Ukraine, and has opened the investigation as a condition to consent to an official visit by Zelensky to Washington, where the Ukrainian president was trying to be invited to legitimize himself before the international community. The campaign of pressure was then carried out – on Trump's suggestion – by his personal lawyer and political ally Rudy Giuliani, who thus opened a second informal US foreign policy channel, but various people in his administration knew about it.

How do we know all this and why don't we use conditionals? The story emerged in August when a US intelligence official, having learned of the contents of the phone call between Trump and Zelensky, submitted a formal complaint to his superiors, considering Trump's initiative to be dangerous and inappropriate. Following the procedures provided for by the law, his superiors evaluated the complaint, and found it to be founded, credible and of "urgent concern": a legal classification that involves an evaluation of the competent committees in the Congress. In the following weeks the case was enriched with evidence, testimony and details that aggravated Trump's position: we read the transcript of the phone call, in which the request is explicitly made ("I would like you to do us a favor"); we learned about the many meetings Rudy Giuliani had for this purpose, bypassing US diplomacy; we learned of how economic and military aid had been blocked on Trump's suggestion, and released only following the intelligence report; we learned how the Ukrainians knew that aid had been blocked for this reason; we learned how the White House has tried to make all traces of the phone call disappear; we have read and heard private messages and public testimonies from US diplomats who have confirmed every aspect of the reconstruction.

Furthermore, we heard Trump himself explicitly admit his intentions: "If I were President Zelensky, I would open an investigation into the Biden".

Gordon Sondland's Wednesday testimony provided further confirmation.

"I carried out the orders received from the president," said Sondland, who then also involved the Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and the main directors of the administration (here is the full video). "Everyone was informed. It was no secret. Everyone was informed via email on July 19, before the phone call. As I told everyone, I told President Zelensky that it was necessary to ensure the opening of the investigation ". "I know that in this committee you have often summarized this complicated story in a simple question: was there a do ut des? The answer is yes. Giuliani clearly told various members of the government, the ambassador to Ukraine and the Ukrainian government that Trump wanted a statement in which Zelensky pledged to open the investigation. We all learned that the investigations were a pre-condition ». Sondland also showed the content of the emails that corroborate his story, e he added that the Ukrainians should not have really to investigate the Biden: Trump would have sufficed to announce an investigation, demonstrating that his goal was not to fight against corruption or to prosecute an offense but to damage his opponent publicly.

At present, in short, there are no great doubts about what happened. But this does not mean that it is possible to predict what will happen.

As shown by the outcome of the so-called Russiagate, the president of the United States cannot be indicted, regardless of whether it can be shown to have violated the law. Also for this reason the Democratic Party – which has a majority in the House – has decided to start impeachment, that is the political and non-judicial procedure through which it is theoretically possible to remove the president from the White House. The impeachment rules stipulate that the Chamber must decide whether to put the president in a state of accusation – at the end of an investigation, which is the one we are witnessing – but that the Senate may eventually decide to remove the president, with a vote requiring a two-thirds majority. In order for a president to be removed from the White House, the Senate must ensure that he is guilty of "high crimes and misdemeanors," a deliberately vague definition, and wide enough to allow Congress to evaluate on a case-by-case basis.

The first point to be ascertained is therefore whether Trump's conduct – having used the power of his institution and the tools of the United States to try to harm a political adversary – could be considered a "serious crime" or a "grave crime". The precedents suggest yes, and not only for the seriousness of the accusations but also for the relative behaviors. In Nixon's case, for example, one of the impeachment charges was simply based on his attempts to hide what happened, and on the decision not to cooperate with the Congress investigation. Even the White House of Trump decided not to cooperate with the investigation, opposing the dissemination of documents and inviting its officials to evade the hearings; and previously he had tried to cover up the call with Zelensky.

The second point to be ascertained however – and that is decisive in an impeachment proceeding – is whether the Republican Party will have the political will to behave accordingly: the final decision on Trump will not be left to a court or a jury but to elected parliamentarians, and the quorum required to end Trump's removal requires the adherence of an important piece of the Republican Party (at least twenty senators). Until now the Republican Party has defended Trump with great compactness, and has been changing lines day by day: some have done it by claiming that the accusations are completely unfounded, but it is a topic that is becoming increasingly weak; others admitting that Trump was wrong but arguing that what he did was not serious enough to justify an epochal and traumatic choice such as impeachment.

The attitude of the Republican Party so far is a consequence of the attitude of its constituents. If US public opinion is very divided on impeachment, with those in favor who today are a little more than those against, according to the polls, the party's base is still firmly on Trump's side, and is willing to defend it at any cost. The senators of the Republican Party who should expose themselves in favor of impeachment would face major disputes from their own voters, thus compromising their chances for re-election. When the Chamber voted to open the investigation against Trump, not one Republican Party MP voted in favor.

For this reason, the public hearings in the Chamber were expected to start very much, based on the idea that a part of the Americans – and the Republicans – could change their mind by listening to the testimonies of the people involved in this story, and based on hope – from part of the Democrats – to find a "John Dean moment": a credible, grave and unequivocal testimony on the conduct of the president of the United States. That moment has arrived, apparently, but it is not clear what the consequences will be. Contrary to what happened to Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, for whom the scandals were more or less "a bolt from the blue", as from journalistic simplifications, the entire short political career of Donald Trump was continuously punctuated by scandals on scandals, from the case of Russia to accusations of corruption, from attempts to favor their companies to the money paid to a porn movie actress to deny her relationship with the president. The sensitivity of US public opinion has changed a great deal since the 1970s, and has been further numbed by the asymmetric radicalization of US politics – the Republican Party today has far-right positions similar to those of Alternative Fur Deutschland, the German neo-fascist party – and by the numerous scandals of the Trump administration, for which the bar of expectations and claims by voters is very low.

The outcome of the impeachment will therefore not depend on whether or not Trump's conduct with respect to Ukraine is ascertained, on which rationally there are no more doubts, nor strictly on the judgment that the senators will give, but on how much is still true in 2019 the famous phrase that Trump said in January 2016: "I could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and in any case I wouldn't lose votes".