Scholar Allan Lichtman defied mainstream wisdom by forecasting early on that Donald Trump would win the 2016 presidential election. In an interview with DW, he now predicts that the president will be impeached next year.

The US president’s basic conduct and politics are unlikely to change in 2019, but the new Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, coupled with the Russia investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller, will lead to the impeachment of Donald Trump, predicts Allan Lichtman.

“I think it’s more likely than not he will get impeached,” the American University professor told DW.

After previously predicting 30 years of presidential elections correctly, Lichtman became a media phenomenon when he — against mainstream wisdom — predicted early on that Trump would win in 2016.

Now Lichtman is convinced that as of 2019, and for the remainder of his term, Trump will be engaged in a fight to remain in office — a fight he well may lose.That’s because until now, Trump could rely on a Republican-controlled Congress to shield him from impeachment or removal from office proceedings — essentially a political trial process — which can be triggered by a single majority vote in the House of Representatives. That process has long been a hot topic among the president’s opponents in the Democratic Party and, in the wake of the midterm elections that flipped the House, Democrats will hold a solid a majority in 2019.

Impeachment becomes possible

As soon as the new Democratic-run House convenes on January 3 next year, impeaching Trump moves from theory to reality. And while top Democrats have so far routinely downplayed calls for impeachment by the so-called anti-Trump resistance movement and by lawmakers demanding a more aggressive stance against the president, the pressure to act could force the party’s leaders to pursue it.

“If Mueller comes up with some devastating findings, the Democratic base will demand impeachment,” said Lichtman. “I think [Trump] is in grave peril from the Mueller probe.”

He added that he believes that Mueller will issue more indictments and reveal even more damaging information linking people from Trump’s inner circle to Russia, thus proving a conspiracy to rig the election and undermine democracy.

“I can’t believe [Mueller] has been working all this time just to say: Sorry, nothing to see here,” said Lichtman. “I think there are going to be some very serious findings from Mueller directly tying the Trump campaign to the Russians.”

What’s more, he noted, it is not just the Mueller probe that Trump has to worry about. There are also the various other criminal investigations that extend down to the state level, including one by New York’s aggressive attorney general and another by the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia.

Liability for Republicans?

Lichtman is not just convinced that Trump will be impeached. He also sees an increasing likelihood that Trump will actually be ousted from the presidency, which many other political experts still consider unlikely. If the House votes to impeach Trump, removing him from office requires a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate. Republicans still control that body by a 51-49 majority, meaning a substantial number of GOP lawmakers would have to vote to oust a president who is a member of their own party.

Source: https://www.dw.com/en/donald-trump-will-be-impeached-in-2019-says-prediction-professor/a-46890125