Fox Sports' Clay Travis' Speaks out About Donald Trump Impeachment Inquiry

Tuesday afternoon, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced that impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump will start. The ultimate goal of the proceedings is to remove Trump from office, but there are many that see this failing. Clay Travis of Fox Sports even provided a different take when he said that the impeachment will benefit the President.

"Donald Trump isn't going to get removed from office," Travis wrote on Tuesday afternoon. "Impeachment is a total sideshow, pure theater. It will backfire on Democrats just like it backfired on Republicans when they impeached Bill Clinton. Trump will emerge stronger just like Clinton did. It helps his re-election bid."

This impeachment investigation reportedly stems from a phone call that Trump had with the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky. During this call, he allegedly discussed former U.S. vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter, per CBS News. Trump allegedly "urged" Zelensky to do an investigation of Biden. This followed him also allegedly instructing Mick Mulvaney — his acting chief of staff — to wait on releasing nearly $400 million in military aid Congress had already appropriated for Ukraine.

For context, Clinton was originally impeached in December 1998 after lawyer Kenneth Starr outlined a case for doing so based on 11 possible charges. This included perjury, obstruction of justice, witness-tampering and abuse of power. The Starr Report, as it was known, also provided explicit details of the year-and-a-half sexual relationship between the president and a 21-year-old intern named Monica Lewinsky. When this proceeded, Clinton became the second president in history to be impeached, following Andrew Johnson in 1868.

On October 8, the House authorized an impeachment inquiry, and the House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment on December 11. The House officially impeached Clinton on December 19, 1998.

On February 12, the Senate voted on whether they would remove Clinton from the Presidency. However, he remained and was able to finish his term after being acquitted on both articles of impeachment. The primary reason for the failure was that the prosecution needed a two-thirds majority to convict Clinton, but they failed to reach a bare majority.

During the proceedings, 45 Democrats and 10 Republicans voted "not guilty" on the charge of perjury. The Senate was split 50-50 on the charge of obstruction of justice. Clinton ultimately finished out his second of two terms before leaving office in January 2001.

Will the impeachment of Donald Trump play out in a similar manner? This early in the process, it's impossible to tell, but Travis sees the president finishing out his term and possibly securing another in 2020.