ANALYSIS
So far the impeachment investigations into US President Donald Trump have been relatively ho-hum, at least to the casual observer.
Unlike previous attempts at presidential impeachment a there's been nothing as razzle-dazzle as sex (Bill Clinton) or robbery (Richard Nixon).
That is until this week, when things got juicy, reports News.com.au.
On Tuesday, the House Intelligence Committee, under the leadership of Democrat Adam Schiff, handed down its 300-page report into Donald Trump's alleged backroom dealings and extortion attempts with Ukraine.
If you have a few hours spare you can read the whole report here.
In summary, Schiff concludes that "the impeachment inquiry has found that President Trump, personally and acting through agents within and outside of the U.S. government, solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, to benefit his re-election".
The President has repeatedly denied that he pressured Ukraine to investigate his political rival, former Vice President and 2020 hopeful Joe Biden, by withholding military aid to the country (the famous "no quid pro quo!" that Trump tweets about angrily on a regular basis).
However most witnesses that spoke during the inquiry contradicted Trump's version of events, all of which was detailed in the report.
But there was also an extra bombshell we hadn't heard before: subpoenaed phone logs from US telco AT & T that showed series of mysterious phone calls, made between the President's personal lawyer-slash-fixer Rudy Giuliani, various departments within the White House and a number known only as "-1".
And if 'Caller -1' is who it appears to be, the President may just have been caught telling serious porkies.
The phone records show that on August 8, when nearly $400 million of military aid was being withheld to Ukraine for reasons no one has adequately explained, Rudy Giuliani made and received several mysterious phone conversations and texts between himself and unnamed persons at the White House.
The brief length of most of the calls suggested he was trying and failing to reach someone, according to the New York Times. He tried the White House switchboard several times. He also tried the Situation Room. At one point he had a 13-minute conversation with a phone number associated to the Office of Management and Budget, the department responsible for allocating – or withholding – things like military aid to Ukraine.
At the same time, Giuliani – who is not officially employed by the White House in any way – was publicly pressuring administration officials to tell the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to open investigations into Biden and his son Hunter, who had business interests in Ukraine that the President and his supporters seem to believe are corrupt, despite no evidence existing that shows this to be the case.
That same evening, Giuliani received a series of phone calls from a White House number marked in the logs only as '-1'.
There's no record anywhere of exactly what was said in the calls but it suggests that Giuliani and significant White House officials were discussing something very important. And the timing suggests it had something to do with Ukraine.
It's not the first time this mysterious 'Caller -1' has made headlines.
According to The New York Times the number also appeared in phone logs belonging to disgraced former Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone who was convicted in November of seven felonies including lying to congress.
Trump was a very close friend of Roger Stone's. He was and is a very close friend of Rudy Giuliani and currently uses him as an all-round 'fixer' to clean up whichever mess happens to be in front of him on any given day.
The fact that 'Caller -1' has appeared in both Stone's and Giuliani's call lists indicates that 'Caller -1' may be the President himself.
If it's proven that 'Caller -1' is the President, then it's yet another cudgel the Democrats can use to try and force their case for impeachment to the Senate. It will suggest strongly that Trump was much more embroiled in Giuliani's backroom efforts to discredit Biden than he has so far admitted.
The logs may even suggest a co-ordinated effort by leading Republicans (a number of other names also popped up in Giuliani's phone records from this time, including the ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes) to keep aid away from Ukraine unless the Ukrainian president did a personal political favour for Trump.
"It could bring Trump not just deeply into this effort to extort Ukraine but could show he's the director and producer and star of the show," Bennett Gershman, a former prosecutor who now teaches law at Pace University, told NPR.
"It could put Trump right at the head, the person leading this conspiracy."
"Extortion."
"Conspiracy".
Both words which sound like they should lead straight to the impeachment train for Donald Trump, and certainly that's the Democrats' plan.
On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that she will begin writing the articles of impeachment needed to take matters to the next stage. So it's now certain that Trump will join a club with only two other members – Nixon and Clinton – as a sitting president who has been formally impeached.
But nothing is that straightforward in the hyper-partisan world of modern politics in the USA.
This sounds like it's the million dollar question but in fact, it's a pretty simple one to answer.
Almost certainly no.
The impeachment proceedings will now move to a trial in the Senate. And this is where things are likely to grind to a shuddering halt.
Not only is the Senate controlled by the Republicans, the President's own lock-step-loyal party, but the Democrats will need two thirds of the chamber's 100 Senators to vote to remove the President at the conclusion of the trial for impeachment to be successful. Even in the unlikely event that a handful of Republican Senators break ranks, the votes will still come up short and Trump will be acquitted.
It's likely that the Republicans will be forced to concede that Trump did withhold military aid to Ukraine in an effort to pressure Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden – particularly if the mysterious Caller-1 turns out to be the President. Their game plan will almost certainly be brazening it out: insisting that the offence happened but isn't big enough to warrant impeachment.
"If you're going to impeach me do it now," the President taunted via tweet on Friday, the words of a man who knows he has this in the bag.
It's worth noting that no president has ever been removed from office due to impeachment. Nixon resigned of his own accord. And Clinton successfully fought off impeachment in the Senate, which is what will almost certainly be the result for Trump as well.
Probably. But like all things in a speed-of-light news cycle, the whole thing may well be forgotten by the time Americans head to the polls in November of next year. But if Trump survives this latest scandal, the lingering belief in voters' minds may well be that the whole affair was a 'hoax' and a 'witch hunt' concocted by partisan Democrats (considering Trump has tweeted the word 'hoax' 44 times since the Ukraine scandal began to unfold in early October, you can be sure this is a concept he'd like the country to come on board with).
This is unlikely to be very helpful for whoever runs against Trump in 2020, and may well energise the Republican base.
In short, Teflon Trump could emerge from his own impeachment like an antibiotic-resistant superbug, more powerful than ever before.
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