To President Donald Trump, his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was “perfect,” but it set in motion a chain of events that has led to articles of impeachment against Trump coming before the House of Representatives. Here’s how we got here.
1. What’s this all about?
In that telephone call, Trump asked Zelenskiy to “look into” allegations of wrongdoing by former Vice President Joe Biden, a potential 2020 competitor, and his son, Hunter. “There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son,” Trump said as he steered the conversation toward the topic, according to an approximate transcript of the call that Trump subsequently ordered released. Trump also asked for an investigation into a conspiracy theory that holds that Ukraine, not Russia, was behind the hacking of U.S. Democrats in the 2016 election, a theory that intelligence and national security officials say is contradicted by evidence uncovered by several investigations.
2. What led to the House getting involved?
The call’s existence may not have been widely known but for the actions of a U.S. intelligence official who filed a whistle-blower complaint alleging that Trump, in that call and through other actions, was “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.” The whistle-blower’s identity has not been officially released. The complaint came to public attention after the inspector general for the intelligence community contacted the House Intelligence Committee after deeming the report credible.
3. What was Trump after?
Trump’s personal lawyer, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, had been arguing for months before the July meeting that while vice president, the elder Biden had derailed an investigation into Burisma Holdings, one of Ukraine’s largest private natural gas companies, in order to protect Hunter Biden, who had been named to Burisma’s board in 2014. Trump has said that the two Bidens “raided and scammed” other countries for millions of dollars. A key witness in impeachment hearings, Gordon Sondland, Trump’s appointee as ambassador to the European Union, however, told the House Intelligence Committee, that Trump cared more about getting an announcement that an investigation into the Bidens was underway than about the result of any probe.
4. Had the Bidens committed crimes?
There’s no evidence of that, though the younger Biden has been accused of trading on his family name. And all available evidence suggests that Joe Biden, along with other European countries, was promoting an anti-corruption agenda with Ukraine, not the reverse.
5. Did Trump offer Ukraine something in return?
Democrats say Trump used two levers to try force Ukraine to comply in what they described as a quid pro quo — an exchange of something of value in return for something else. One was the release of funding. A week or more before the call, Trump had directed the withholding of $391 million in military and security aid that Congress had approved to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia. (The money was ultimately disbursed to Ukraine on Sept. 11, after disclosure of the whistle-blower complaint.) The other was an invitation to visit the White House, something that Zelenskiy, a political novice sworn in as president in May, very much wanted as a signal of U.S. support.
6. Who saw a quid pro quo?
A number of witnesses testified in impeachment hearings that they believed Trump was pressuring Zelenskiy. Sondland stated flatly that there was a quid pro quo condition for a White House visit, and testified that he’d informed an adviser to Zelenskiy that Ukraine likely wouldn’t receive the military aid unless it publicly committed to the investigations Trump wanted. A U.S. Army officer who works for the White House National Security Council, Alexander Vindman, said he listened in on the Trump-Zelenskiy call and was so disturbed by the content that he reported his concerns to the NSC’s legal counsel.
7. What are Trump’s opponents doing?
8. What do Trump and his supporters say?
Trump has derided the impeachment inquiry as a witch hunt and illegitimate. His Republican allies in Congress have derided it as a rushed drive toward a predetermined conclusion and as an attempt to overturn the outcome of the 2016 election. They’ve also pointed out that no witness has given first hand testimony stating that Trump blocked the aid for political gain. Trump and Giuliani have insisted that Trump’s sole motivation in holding up financial aid to Ukraine, and in pressuring Zelenskiy on the call, was to make sure corruption was being addressed in a country that gets aid from the U.S. “We have an obligation to investigate corruption,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News. “And that’s what it was.”
9. What’s the standard for impeachment?
The U.S. Constitution says the president “shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” As Congress has defined it through the years, the phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors” includes exceeding or abusing the powers of the presidency, or misusing the office for improper purpose or gain.
10. Where is this headed?
The articles of impeachment were approved by the House Judiciary Committee in a party-line vote. A majority vote by the House, where Democrats hold 234 of the 435 seats, on any article of impeachment would send it to the Senate for consideration. There, after a trial led by the chief justice of the U.S., it would take a vote of two-thirds of senators present to order Trump removed from office — an extremely high bar, especially since Republicans hold 53 of the 100 seats. Should Trump be impeached in the House but acquitted in the Senate — as President Bill Clinton was in 1998-1999 — the matter would presumably become a top issue in the 2020 election, as Trump seeks a second term.
The Reference Shelf
- QuickTake explainers on Trump’s claims about the Bidens and Ukraine and the battle between Congress and Trump over witnesses and documents.
- The approximate transcript of the Trump-Zelenskiy phone call.
- A promised Oval Office meeting might have been the clearest quid pro quo.
- Who’s who among the Americans involved in the Trump-Ukraine uproar.
- The White House doesn’t like the breadth of a proposed law aimed at stopping foreign involvement in U.S. elections.
- In New York magazine, Jonathan Chait proposed seven articles of impeachment.
- Trump’s “missteps do not rise to the level of impeachable offenses,” Andrew C. McCarthy writes in National Review.
- Bloomberg Opinion columnist Tyler Cowen sees a real possibility of Republican senators removing Trump from office.
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