President Donald Trump responded to a formal impeachment inquiry Wednesday saying he did nothing wrong.
Lawmakers got their hands on a whistleblower complaint about a call between the president and Ukraine's leader, Wednesday.
In a summary of the call also released Wednesday, the president asked Volodymr Zelensky to look into Presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter who was on the board of a Ukranian oil company. President Trump even suggested he work with Attorney General William Barr.
The conversation led to an impeachment inquiry from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Dr. Hunter Bacot, political science professor at UNCG said the inquiry is significant.
"This is high drama at the highest level. I mean you’re putting the Executive Branch versus the House of Representatives versus the Senate. And so what we are going to see first is the House take this up and try to move forward with it," said Dr. Bacot. "It could take a while, but then they will move over to the Senate will they will conduct a trial basically."
Speaker Pelosi cautioned against working towards impeachment in the past, but Dr. Bacot said things changed.
"Breaking the law was the one thing I think they could rest their hat on and say, 'Yes you broke the law,'" said Bacot. "The other thing is the Executive branch. They pushed hard, but they really never gotten anywhere past that breaking point according to whoever side you’re speaking about or speaking from."
The president and some Republicans don't believe the president broke any laws, but Pelosi and some democrats says say the president violated his oath of office by directly asking a foreign power, the president of Ukraine, to investigate a political rival.
Dr. Bacot expects the next steps in the process to go by slow.
"It could be anywhere from 3 to 6 months. Democrats say before January. That’s very unlikely. we do have Christmas, said Bacot." It will probably take 6 to 8 months and then we are looking at elections. So there’s no telling what will happen."