Nancy Pelosi Announces Impeachment Inquiry of President Trump

Tensions flared in Washington D.C. after it was revealed that a whistleblower complaint had been filed against President Trump on September 9th. The House and Senate intelligence committees were made aware of the whistleblower complaint through the Intelligence Community Inspector General. Through various reports, the world was made aware that the complaint had been in relation to concerning activity in a phone call between President Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. As events unfolded it was confirmed that the call in question was what many in congress described as deeply troubling. The transcript of the call was released and it was revealed that President Trump had asked President Zelensky for a “favor”. President Zelensky had indicated to President Trump “We are almost ready to buy more javelins from the United States for defense purposes”, to which Trump replies “I would like you to do us a favor though.” He then goes on to ask Zelensky to open investigations in the Ukraine involving both a theory that Ukraine was involved with meddling in the 2016 election, and investigation of corruption against Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President Joe Biden. President Trump purports that Joe Biden had pressured Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who was investigating Hunter Biden, who was on the board of a Ukranian energy company. Although it was confirmed that Joe Biden urged Ukraine to fire said prosecutor, both Ukraine and independent reporting have confirmed that the prosecutor was not investigating Hunter Biden. President Trump's suspicions that Ukraine was involved in the 2016 election meddling, and not Russia, have been contradicted by the United States intelligence agencies, who frequently indicate that Russia had very heavy involvement in meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

In the whistleblower complaint, it was also revealed that after the call transpired, the transcript of the call was ordered to be placed on a codeword secured server. This raised concern that Trump had been intentionally trying to hide the call. When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was asked if he was on the call by Martha Raddatz of ABC, Pompeo claimed that he was not on the call and did not know the contents of the call. This week it came out that he was on the call, as well as a top Aide of Vice President Mike Pence.

Members of congress were alarmed by the contents of the released transcript, and the Democrats claim that President Trump was using the presidency to pressure a foreign government to investigate his political rival, Joe Biden, who is a Democratic candidate for president in 2020. On September 24th, Nancy Pelosi, announced an impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump. After a number of Democrats who previously resisted efforts to impeach Trump announced they would be in favor of an impeachment inquiry, it is expected that if it were to go to a vote in the House of Representatives, impeachment would begin. However it is unclear how the Republican controlled Senate will react to an impeachment investigation. Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconell said that if impeachment succeeded in the house “I would have no choice but to take it up.” but then weeks later reneged, and in a campaign video said that he was the only one who could stop an impeachment investigation.

Originally published in the Fulcrum, October 7, 2019