September 24, 2019 was a momentous day for the rule of law

The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom handed a stinging rebuke to Boris Johnson. The Metropolitan Opera fired its greatest living star Placido Domingo amid persistent allegations of sexual harassment. (Domingo, who has sung at the Met for 51 years, vigorously denied the allegations._

And Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Democrat Nancy Pelosi, measured tempered Nancy Pelosi, turned the corner on impeachment, the awesome remedy the United States Constitution provides where the president is guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanours.”

Pelosi had been always cautious on impeachment. There had been little political appetite for it in the country. One of my friends called the drumroll of impeachment talk in the press “impeachment porn”; he meant it was all so salaciously repetitious that it had become boring.

The real argument against it is that a bill of impeachment is an exercise in futility. Conviction would require a two-thirds majority in the Senate, and the votes are not there: The 100-person Senate consists of 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats and two independents, who caucus with the Democrats. Senate Republicans, who hardly present these days a “profile in courage, seem to be possessed of a certain tribalism and are sufficient in numbers to block conviction and removal from office.

Only twice in American history, in the cases of Abraham Lincoln’s successor Andrew Johnson and that of Bill Clinton, has the House of Representatives voted a bill of impeachment. Nixon resigned while the House of Representatives was drafting a bill of impeachment to remove him. In the cases of Johnson and Clinton, both were acquitted and served out their terms.

President Donald Trump had already been accused in the Mueller Report and elsewhere of such impeachable crimes as obstruction of justice, welcoming aid from the Russians in his 2016 presidential campaign, ignoring subpoenas from the House and law enforcement, trashing the Constitution with his persistent attacks on press freedoms, and accepting “emoluments” from foreign dignitaries staying at his hotels. None of these astonishing facts had been sufficient to force Speaker Pelosi off the dime.

Then, Trump turned the corner. A White House whistleblower reported to the inspector general of the intelligence community that Trump had been involved in a breach of national security. The scandal centres on a phone call that Trump allegedly had with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky last July 25.

At that time, the White House had put—at least a week before the conversation—as much as $400 million in much needed military and security aid to Ukraine which had been appropriated to buttress the country’s resistance to Russian encroachment. Trump, it was reported, had on at least eight occasions in the course of the conversation demanded that Zelinsky institute a corruption investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden, his principal rival in the 2020 elections. (Biden’s son had been a director of a Ukraine company that had been previously investigated, but no fact has emerged suggesting wrongdoing on the part of either of the Bidens.)

The inspector general’s complaint went to The Trump-appointed Director of National Intelligence who is required under the law to release a whistleblower’s complaint to the relevant committees of Congress. Full stop. Trump ordered him not to. Thus far, Trump has stonewalled the request, as he has with other Congressional subpoenas probing his financial and business affairs.

So, what made Pelosi flip on impeachment? It only takes one straw to break the camel’s back. Trump was a foreign influence in elections recidivist. Special Counsel Robert Mueller had already investigated him for violation of campaign finance laws, which prohibit anyone in a federal election from soliciting anything of value from a foreign person. There was the famous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting attended by Russians, Donald Trump, Jr. Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, campaign manager Paul Manafort (now a convicted felon) and some Russians in which Trump, Jr. pressed for dirt on Hillary Clinton in the midst of the presidential campaign.

So when the Zelinsky telephone call came up, Pelosi realized that Trump had crossed a red line, and she had to act. The political calculus aside, the Democrats could not be seen as condoning the Trump trashing of the separation of powers baked into the Constitution.

Trump may have only 17 more months in office. He may be voted out in the 2020 elections. The country is deeply divided along partisan lines. And the Senate is unlikely to convict.

But what is at issue for Pelosi and the American people is the legal principle, twice stated in the Mueller Report, that no one—not even the president—is above the law. “L’état, c’est moi” may have been good enough for Louis XIV, but it won’t wash in the self-governing democracy which is the United States of America.

James D Zirin's book Plaintiff in Chief—A Portrait of Donald Trump in 3500 Lawsuits is out in the UK in October (£22.99, hardback). Pre-order it now.