Since then, as more and more information has come out, it’s developed into a massive scandal - one that spurred Speaker Nancy Pelosi to declare that the House of Representatives would conduct an “ official impeachment inquiry.” And now, Trump appears to be in the greatest impeachment danger of his presidency so far. Trump also may have tried to punish Ukraine for not complying, including by holding up $400 million in US military aid the country was expecting.Ī whistleblower within the US government became concerned about all this, and filed a complaint in mid-August.

This pressure campaign from Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, lasted several months, and included both public and private demands on the Ukrainians. 1) What’s the short explanation of what this is all about?Įarlier this year, President Donald Trump pressed the president of Ukraine to investigate the potential 2020 Democratic nominee, Joe Biden. Understand the impeachment process, from its history to what comes next. Your guide to the Donald Trump impeachment saga But here is our basic understanding of the facts so far. There’s much we still don’t know about exactly what happened. And it was worrying enough to spur a government employee to file a complaint and set things in motion. To some extent, it involves multiple government agencies, including William Barr’s Justice Department, Mike Pompeo’s State Department, and Mick Mulvaney’s Office of Management and Budget. President Trump attends the 117th Army-Navy football game with lawyer Rudy Giuliani in Baltimore, Maryland, on December 10, 2016. It’s about a months-long effort by Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to drum up foreign investigations into Trump’s political opponents. The Trump-Ukraine whistleblower scandal - it doesn’t really have a catchy name yet - is about more than one phone call. Where did this whole thing come from? Why does this scandal, rather than so many other Trump scandals, appear to be catching on? Could it really mean the end of Trump’s presidency? And why is so much of American politics about Ukraine these days? So you’d be forgiven for feeling a bit of whiplash. The chaotic days afterward were filled with leaks, revelations, document releases, and a new Democratic consensus in favor of an impeachment push. News broke that the Trump administration was withholding a mysterious whistleblower complaint from Congress on September 13. In the course of just two weeks, a previously unknown scandal sprawled to imperil Donald Trump’s presidency.

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