SERIOUSLY, Mr President?

Just a few weeks after you were cleared by Special Counsel Robert Mueller of colluding with a foreign power to fix the 2016 Election, you called the leader of another foreign power asking him to investigate your main presidential rival Joe Biden for the 2020 Election?

Have you lost your mind????

That was my first reaction when I read the bombshell transcript of Donald Trump’s July conversation with Ukraine’s President Volodymr Zelensky.

On any level, this was spectacularly ill-advised and brazen behavior, and far removed from the ‘perfect’ and ‘beautiful’ chat that President Trump led us to believe it had been.

All smiles! Donald and Melania Trump pose with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and wife Olena Zelenskaya ahead of a dinner on Tuesday night

And this is no longer ambiguous Washington rumor, it’s cold hard fact confirmed in Donald Trump’s own words, released in an official document from the White House.

Any impartial non-partisan observer who reads that transcript would conclude it’s at very least, highly inappropriate.

I certainly did.

Frankly, it’s absolutely shocking to me that President Trump would be so reckless so soon after the Mueller probe ended.

He must have known it would become public, and spark the very firestorm that is now erupting over it.

A transcript of the President Trump's July conversation with his Ukrainian counterpart was released on Wednesday (above), the day after Nancy Pelosi announced formal impeachment hearings would take place

BUT, and it’s a very significant ‘but’, it wasn’t a crime.

At least, that was the clear determination of the Justice Department when its high-powered legal brains carefully studied the transcript after it was referred to them following a complaint by a mystery whistle-blower.

They concluded unequivocally that there was no criminal case to answer.

And the main reason for that, I suspect, is that it failed to establish the main charge – namely, that President Trump deliberately withdrew substantial aid to Ukraine unless they did his bidding on the investigation into Joe Biden.

So there was no ‘quid pro quo’, which would almost certainly have taken the conversation into very perilous legal waters.

Trump asked the leader of Ukraine to investigate what he claims is possible - though vehemently denied - corruption in that country involving Biden’s son Hunter (pictured together above)

Yes, Trump is heard saying ‘I’d like you to do us a favor’, and yes, he had withheld the aid just days before the call.

But there is no damning irrefutable connection proven between these two things in what has so far been published – no ‘smoking gun’.

And without it, we’re left with Trump asking the leader of Ukraine to investigate what he claims is possible - though vehemently denied - corruption in that country involving Biden’s son Hunter.

Many will think this is a not entirely unreasonable request given that Biden Snr was Vice-President at the time his son was being paid $50,000 a month to advise a dodgy Ukrainian gas company, Burisma Holdings, without, say his critics, any proper experience to do so.

Former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich - who was ousted from power after mass protests - had close ties with a 'dodgy' gas company on whose board Hunter Biden sat

As Vice-President, Joe Biden led US diplomatic efforts to protect Ukraine’s fledgling democracy and root out corruption after mass protests ousted former President Viktor Yanukovych.

Burisma, on whose board Hunter Biden sat, had links to Yanukovych that prompted corruption probes and caused the Obama White House to panic about a potentially damaging conflict of interest.

No such conflict has ever been proven, but the stench of suspicion surrounding Hunter Biden’s activities in Ukraine remains and seems a legitimate issue of concern if his father wants to be President. The bottom line is this: Hunter was only valuable to Burisma because his dad was Vice-President, so what did he do for them?

The transcript reveals that Trump also asked President Zelensky to look into whether he could find Hillary Clinton’s infamous missing email server, which he said he’d been told might have ended up in Ukraine.

Again, many, particularly among Trump’s base, will think that’s not an outrageous request given how central it was to a criminal investigation that may have affected the 2016 Election.

The transcript also reveals that Trump also asked President Zelensky to look into whether he could find Hillary Clinton’s infamous missing email server, which he said he’d been told might have ended up in Ukraine

Yet outraged Democrats think all this is deadly serious presidential misconduct, have decided to risk dying on this Ukraine hill, and are now moving to impeach the President.

And by doing so, I think they’re making a terrible political mistake that may well cause them to end up.. dying on this hill.

Impeachment is a very rare thing in America.

Only three Presidents have ever been impeached – Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon.

None of them was convicted though Nixon would have been had he not resigned.

Only three Presidents have ever been impeached – Andrew Johnson, top left, Bill Clinton, top right, and Richard Nixon, above. None of them was convicted though Nixon would have been had he not resigned.

To be successful, an impeachment process must pass through the House of Representatives and then go to trial in the Senate.

And there’s the big problem for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her fellow Democrats.

They’ll almost certainly get Trump’s impeachment through the House where they hold a majority. In fact, the votes are already almost there.

But as things stand, they don’t have a cat in hell’s chance of getting Trump convicted in the Senate, where 67 of 100 votes are needed to succeed and there are currently 53 Republican Senators.

So unless some new dynamite piece of information emerges during the investigations then this bid will inevitably fail, and everyone knows it.

And everyone also knows how gleefully Trump likes to seize on failure and mock ‘losers’.

He shamelessly used the Mueller Report to go on a seemingly never-ending one-man ticker tape parade, branding the media who obsessed about it ‘fake news’ and his political opponents a bunch of useless wastrels who got their come-uppance for lying about him.

Just imagine what Trump would do with an impeachment acquittal in the run-up to November, 2020?!

So why in hell have the Democrats done this?

Well, I believe it’s what NFL fans call a ‘Hail Mary Pass’, one made in desperation with the knowledge that it has very little chance of success.

The quarterback, Ms Pelosi, has hurled the impeachment ball into the air after intense pressure from her own side, and is hoping it somehow lands in the end zone with enough mud to sink Trump’s re-election chances.

She’s done it, after repeatedly saying she wouldn’t, because Pelosi is a smart long-serving Washington cookie that has read the election tealeaves and reached the sobering conclusion Trump’s increasingly likely to win re-election.

The US economy’s doing well, certainly by comparison to most other countries, and when sitting presidents run for re-election on the back of a strong economy, they invariably win again.

To be successful, an impeachment process must pass through the House of Representatives and then go to trial in the Senate. And there’s the big problem for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, above, and her fellow Democrats.

There’s also the issue of who could beat him anyway?

The Democrat presidential candidate field looks increasingly lackluster, and I don’t think Trump fears any of them with the possible exception of Biden who despite his age remains a canny operator.

Yet the irony of this impeachment development is that it may end up doing more harm to Biden than Trump.

There are, as I said, very genuine questions to be asked as to exactly what Hunter Biden was doing in Ukraine for his $50,000 a month, while his father held one the second highest office in America.

What did he promise them when he joined?

What influence did he wield?

Did his father intervene to prevent his son being investigated?

Biden Snr says they never discussed it, which seems highly implausible, not least because Biden Jr said they did at least once.

Whatever the truth, it will all come out in these impeachment investigations, and if the Bidens aren’t being entirely straight then it could be Joe who is politically scalped, not Trump.

So, I find this impeachment move inexplicable.

‘It turned out to be a nothing call,’ Trump said today.

No, it didn’t Mr President.

It was a very dumb call to have made.

But nowhere as dumb as the Democrats’ call to try to impeach you over it.

THAT call may cost them the election next year.