An impeachment inquiry against Donald
Trump was initiated on September 24, 2019, by Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of
the United States House of Representatives, in a televised speech. The inquiry
was announced in the wake of an anonymous whistleblower report that alleged abuse
of power, and then cover-up, by Donald Trump during his presidency.
From May to August 2019, President of
the United States Donald Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani repeatedly
pressed the Government of Ukraine to investigate Democratic presidential
candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter. A Ukranian advisor on September 25,
2019 stated that Trump would only talk with Ukrainian president Volodymyr
Zelensky if they discussed a future investigation of the Bidens. Trump placed a hold on military aid to Ukraine
at the same time. Trump was shown to had pressured Ukrainian president Volodymyr
Zelensky to launch two investigations during a July 2019 phone call, including
an investigation into the actions of former vice president and 2020
presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. The whistleblower
also accused the White House of attempting to cover up the contents of this
phone call. In response to the report,
the Trump administration released a transcript of this phone call, which
confirmed that Trump had asked Zelensky to "look into" the Biden
controversy. The whistleblower report also implicated Trump's personal lawyer,
Rudy Giuliani, and U.S. Attorney General William Barr as part of a more
widespread pressure campaign directed towards the Ukrainian government. Two
individuals close to Trump told The New York Times that the alleged
behavior was typical of President Trump's dealings with foreign leaders
Efforts to impeach Donald Trump have
been made by various people and groups who assert that President Donald Trump
has engaged in impeachable activity during his presidency. Talk of impeachment
began before Trump took office. Formal efforts were initiated by Representatives
Al Green and Brad Sherman, both Democrats (D), in 2017, the first year of his
presidency. A December 2017 resolution of impeachment failed in the then
Republican-led House by a 58–364 margin.
Democrats
gained control of the House following the 2018 elections and launched multiple
investigations into Trump's actions and finances. On January 17, 2019, new
accusations involving Trump surfaced, claiming he instructed his long-time
lawyer, Michael Cohen, to lie under oath surrounding Trump's involvement with
the Russian government to erect a Trump Tower in Moscow.
This also sparked
calls for an investigation and for the president to "resign or be
impeached" should such claims be proven genuine.
The Mueller Report, released on April
18, 2019, reached no conclusion about whether Trump had committed criminal
obstruction of justice. Mueller strongly hinted that it was up to Congress to
make such a determination. Congressional support for an impeachment inquiry increased
as a result.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi
initially resisted calls for impeachment. In May 2019, she indicated that
Trump's continued actions, which she characterized as obstruction of justice
and refusal to honor congressional subpoenas, might make an impeachment inquiry
necessary. An increasing number of House Democrats and then-Republican
Representative Justin Amash (Michigan) were requesting such an inquiry.
A majority of House members support the
initiation of an impeachment inquiry against Trump. As of September 27,
2019, this includes at least 225 Democrats, 1 Republican and 1 independent,
Representative Amash from Michigan, who left the Republican Party on July 4,
2019, in the wake of his protests regarding the lack of holding Trump
accountable. Amash became a leading supporter of impeachment after the
whistleblower report was released, stating that the call script was a
"devastating indictment of the president." After further allegations
of misconduct came to light in the days afterwards, Nevada representative Mark
Amodei became the first Republican in the House of Representatives to support
an impeachment inquiry, while Charlie Baker and Phil Scott became the first [incumbent] Republican governors to support
impeachment proceedings.
Trump-Ukraine Controversy
From May to August 2019, President Trump
and his personal attorney pressed the Ukrainian government to investigate Hunter
Biden, the son of 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden. The whistleblower
report centered around one instance of such pressure that occurred in a July
2019 phone call between Trump and Zelensky, in which Trump mentioned two
possible investigations that he hoped to see Ukraine launch. One of these would
concern allegations that connected the Russian hacking of the Democratic
National Committee during the 2016 United States presidential election campaign
to Ukranian actors. The other investigation concerned Joe Biden, former U.S.
Vice President and a candidate for the 2020 presidential election, and the
Ukrainian business dealings of his son Hunter Biden. The whistleblower report
accused the White House of attempting to hide the official transcript of the
phone call. At the time of the inquiry, Biden was the leading candidate in Democratic
Party primary polling, according to poll aggregators, making him Trump's most
likely 2020 election opponent.
In July 2019, Trump placed a hold on
military aid to Ukraine, while "providing no explanation". He lifted
this hold in September of that year. Prominent Democrats, including Senators Robert
Menendez and Chris Murphy, suggested that this hold may have been intended to
implicitly or explicitly pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate
Hunter Biden.
On September 22, 2019, shortly after the
whistleblower's allegations became public, Trump acknowledged that he had
discussed Joe Biden during a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky
on July 25. Trump stated that "The conversation I had was largely
congratulatory, was largely corruption, all of the corruption taking place, was
largely the fact that we don't want our people like Vice President Biden and
his son creating [sic] to the corruption already in Ukraine". On
September 25, the White House released part of a transcript of Trump's
conversation with Zelensky following a promise to do so the previous day; on
the same day, the whistleblower complaint was released to Congress.
Trump denied that his hold on military
aid for Ukraine was linked to the Ukrainian government's refusal to investigate
the Hunter Biden controversy, while also saying that withholding aid for this
reason would have been ethically acceptable if he had done it. On September 26,
2019, Trump accused the whistleblower of being a "spy" and guilty of treason,
before noting that treason is punishable by death.
Two people close to Donald Trump told The
New York Times that the behavior in the scandal was "typical" of
his "dealings on the phone with world leaders": "Engage in flattery,
discuss mutual cooperation, and bring up a [personal] favor that then could be
delegated to another person on Mr. Trump's team." In an interview,
Giuliani defended Trump, calling the president's request of the Ukrainian
president "perfectly appropriate", while also indicating that he
himself may have made a similar request to Ukrainian officials. Giuliani had
been accused of participating in the Ukranian pressure campaign in the
whistleblower's report.
Inquiry
On the evening of September 24, 2019,
Pelosi announced that six committees of the House of Representatives would
undertake a formal impeachment inquiry against President Trump. Pelosi accused
Trump of betraying his oath of office, U.S. national security, and the
integrity of the country's elections. The six committees charged with the task
are the committees on Financial Services, the Judiciary, Intelligence, Foreign
Affairs, Oversight and Reform, and Ways and Means.
Joseph Maguire, the acting Director of
National Intelligence who delayed the whistleblower complaint from reaching
Congress, testified in front of the House Intelligence Committee on September
26, 2019. Maguire defended his decision not to immediately forward the
whistleblower complaint to congress and explained that he consulted the White
House Counsel and the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department but was
unable to determine if the document was protected by executive privilege.
Democrats on the committee questioned his actions, arguing that the law demands
that he "shall" forward such complaints to the committee. Maguire
countered that the situation was unique since the complaint involves
communications of the president. Members of the Intelligence Committee also
asked the director why he chose to consult with White House lawyers when he was
not required to do so by law, to which he responded that he believed "it
would be prudent to have another opinion."
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