After meeting with her Democratic caucus, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Tuesday the launch of a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump’s alleged efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate the business dealings of former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden.
Pelosi said “the president must be held accountable” for a “betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security, and the betrayal of the integrity of our elections.”
She charged that the White House has illegally obstructing the case by not turning over a whistleblower complaint concerning Trump’s July call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“This week, the president has admitted to asking the president of Ukraine to take actions which would benefit him politically,” Pelosi said. “Therefore, today, I’m announcing the House of Representatives is moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry. I’m directing our six committees to proceed with their investigations under that umbrella.
“The president must be held accountable,” she said. “No one is above the law.”
President Trump tweeted that he has authorized the release Wednesday “of the complete, fully declassified and unredacted transcript” of his phone conversation with the Ukrainian president.
“You will see it was a very friendly and totally appropriate call,” he wrote. “No pressure and, unlike Joe Biden and his son, NO quid pro quo! This is nothing more than a continuation of the Greatest and most Destructive Witch Hunt of all time!”
The House Judiciary Committee, led by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., already has begun what it calls impeachment proceedings, even though it lacks the required vote of the full House.
Nadler’s committee, without the full-throated support of Pelosi, has been focused mainly on charges that already have been thoroughly investigated and found wanting by Robert Mueller’s special counsel. But the new allegations already had mobilized the House before Pelosi’s announcement, drawing support for impeachment from centrists and senior members.
Trump is being accused of threatening to withhold aid to Ukraine if its government didn’t investigate the business dealings of Hunter Biden, but that’s what Joe Biden himself did, argued Rep. Devin Nunes, D-Calif., in a Fox News interview Sunday.
Hunter Biden made $50,000 a month as a board member of the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings while having no experience in the field. His father, the current frontrunner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, admitted in a 2018 talk to the Council on Foreign Relations that he threatened to withhold more than $1 billion in loan guarantees if Ukraine didn’t fire the prosecutor who happened to be investigating Hunter.
It’s unclear if the request was directly tied to Hunter Biden’s case, Fox News noted, because other nations also wanted the prosecutor to be sacked.
But while the former vice president has insisted he never spoke with his son about his dealings with Burisma, Hunter Biden told the New Yorker in a story published in July that his father did discuss the Burisma relationship:
As Hunter recalled, his father discussed Burisma with him just once: “Dad said, I hope you know what you are doing,’ and I said, ‘I do.'”
Biden says that Trump is trying to “smear” him because he knows he’ll “beat him like a drum” pic.twitter.com/NrTKffTAIb
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) September 21, 2019
Meanwhile, House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., announced Tuesday that the whistleblower wants to speak to the committee.
“We have been informed by the whistleblower’s counsel that their client would like to speak to our committee and has requested guidance from the Acting DNI as to how to do so,” Schiff wrote on Twitter.
“We’re in touch with counsel and look forward to the whistleblower’s testimony as soon as this week,” he said.
Trump, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, acknowledged he sought to hold up aid to Ukraine but insisted there was no “quid pro quo.”
He said the reason was because he “wanted other countries to pay.”
“There was no pressure applied, nothing,” he said.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy downplayed Pelosi’s announcement Tuesday, noting Democrats have been going after Trump since 2016.
He said Pelosi hasn’t really changed anything, as Nadler’s committee already is conducting what it calls an impeachment inquiry.
“It’s time to put the public before politics,” McCarthy said.
‘You should be asking him’
The accusations against Trump arose last week when the Washington Post reported a whistleblower complaint, according to a person familiar with the matter, raised concern about a phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian president.
The Wall Street Journal reported Monday: “President Trump in a July phone call repeatedly pressured the president of Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden’s son, according to people familiar with the matter, urging Volodymyr Zelensky about eight times to work with Rudy Giuliani on a probe that could hamper Mr Trump’s potential 2020 opponent.”
Last week, the former vice president became visibly irritated when Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked him about his actions with Ukraine regarding his son, declaring, “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.”
Jabbing his finger at Doocy, Biden scolded the reporter for not focusing on Trump.
“I know Trump deserves to be investigated. He is violating every basic norm of a president,” Biden said. “You should be asking him why is he on the phone with a foreign leader, trying to intimidate a foreign leader. … You should be looking at Trump.”
‘The future of democracy is at stake’
Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., called for an impeachment investigation in a speech Tuesday on the House floor, saying “the future of democracy is at stake” and “now is the time to act.”
“Sometimes I’m afraid to go to sleep for fear that I will wake up and our democracy will be gone, will be gone, and never return,” he said. “This administration demonstrates complete disregard and disdain for ethics, for the law and for the constitution. They have lied under oath, they have refused to account for their action and appear before legislative body, who have the constitutional right to inquire about their activities.”
Fox News reported administration sources confirmed on Tuesday that the Office of Management and Budget told the State Department and Department of Defense in July that it was putting a hold on nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine.
The administration sources said the holdup was tied to concerns about corruption and other issues.
Nevertheless, 164 of the 235 House Democrats have indicated they support possible impeachment proceedings. A majority of the House’s 535 members would be required to impeach the president.
A two-thirds vote of the Republican-controlled Senate would then be required to convict.
What about the Bidens?
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures” that the Justice Department should launch a special investigation of the Biden family’s business dealings with Ukraine.
Former assistant U.S. attorney Andrew McCarthy,
in a column for National Review, wrote that if Joe Biden “used his political influence to squeeze a foreign power for his son’s benefit, that should be explored.”
“Of course,” he said, “Trump should not use the powers of his office solely for the purpose of obtaining campaign ammunition to deploy against a potential foe.”
But McCarthy noted that all presidents “who seek reelection wield their power in ways designed to improve their chances.”
“If Trump went too far in that regard, we could look with disfavor on that while realizing that he would not be the first president to have done so. And if, alternatively, the president had a good reason for making a reciprocal commitment to Ukraine, that commitment would not become improper just because, collaterally, it happened to help Trump or harm Biden politically.”
