A Whistleblower, an Impeachment Inquiry, and What This Could Mean for the Trump Administration

Only one day after former Special Counsel Robert Mueller testified in front of both the House Judiciary and House Intelligence Committees, President Donald Trump engaged in a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, where Trump asserted he wanted the Ukrainian government to look at his Democratic opponents, specifically, Joe Biden as a “favor.” This call came whilst Trump was withholding almost $400 million in aid to Ukraine, in an effort to strengthen their military amidst struggles with Russia. During the call, Trump did not outright speak on the military aid but implied it through his statements to the Ukrainian leader.

Following news of the whistleblower’s complaint becoming widely known, the White House supplied the public with a reconstructed “transcript” of the conversation between the two leaders. Read the transcript here.

On the evening of Monday, Sept. 23, 2019, the Washington Post issued an op-ed from seven freshman Democrats in the House concerning the allegations laid out on the whistleblower’s complaint. In short, the seven freshmen Congress members, all with military or defense and intelligence backgrounds, stated  President Trump “may have used his position to pressure a foreign country into investigation a political opponent,” and planned to “use U.S. taxpayer dollars as leverage to do it.” The Congress members continue in the piece, stating that on Sept. 9, Congress was notified by the intelligence community’s inspector general that there was a “‘credible’ and ‘urgent’ whistleblower complaint related to national security.” This same whistleblower complaint allegedly also contained information similar in nature to the accusations against President Trump. As of Monday evening, the whistleblower complaint, which by federal law is required to be released to Congress, was being occluded by the White House. 

Abiding by and defending the Constitution, Congress “must determine whether the president was indeed willing to use his power and withhold security assistance funds to persuade a foreign country to assist him in an election,” the team of Congress members stated. Their address follows months of denying impeachment of the President, in favor of being more moderate Democrats and serving only for the people they are representing. Essentially, the officials believe the current allegations against the President were, and continue to be, threatening enough to the ordinary American citizen to constitute, at the very least, an inquiry on impeachment. Read the full op-ed here. 

The op-ed in the Washington Post is the beginning of a storm against the President, as only a day later, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi declared a special committee in the House will be conducting a formal impeachment inquiry on President Trump. The special committee on the impeachment seeks to charge Trump with betraying his oath of office and the nation’s security in attempting to involve a foreign body in the 2020 Presidential election. 

Pelosi, like the members of Congress who released the op-ed to the Washington Post, had for months tried to pacify her caucus’s calls for impeachment, likely in protection of those more moderate Congress members from swing areas. Finally, she felt as though the allegations against Trump were serious and indisputable enough that she launched a formal impeachment inquiry. Speaker Pelosi addressed the nation on Tuesday regarding the impeachment inquiry, stating “the actions taken to date by the president have seriously violated the Constitution,” also declaring the president must be held accountable, for “no one is above the law.”

The outcome of the impeachment inquiry is, at this time, still uncertain. Nonetheless, to move forward with the inquiry, the House welcomed 218 members’ support. By Wednesday, the number of members in support of the inquiry had shot up to above 150. By Friday evening, 218 members were in support- 217 Democrats and 1 Independent. 

In the following days, President Trump began to confirm some of the details of his phone call with President Zelensky but has also asserted that he feels he acted with appropriate conduct. By insisting on these things, he also asserted he would release a transcript of his phone conversation. As priorly stated (see above), the “transcript” was a reconstruction of the said phone call, but not a transcription from July 25th. Whether that will matter in the coming months remains to be seen. 

Speaker Pelosi advised six House committees working together on the inquiry to work under the “umbrella of impeachment” and to find any impeachable offenses which could bring on articles of impeachment. A vote to authorize the inquiry also remains to be seen, but there has been widespread support for such an action. However, Speaker Pelosi also did not direct the six House committees investigating the President to complete the inquiry by any specific deadline. 

On Thursday, Sept. 26, the House Intelligence Committee supplied a declassified copy of the whistleblower complaint to the public. Along with the complaint, the formal letter from the inspector general of the intelligence community describing the urgency of this claim was also released. The complaint, which had been blocked from release by the White House until at least Wednesday morning, alleges there are officials in the White House that believe they witnessed the President’s abuse of power against President Zelensky. 

President Trump advised not only his personal lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, but also U.S. Attorney General William Barr to pressure the Ukrainian government, in an attempt to interfere with the 2020 election. Officials in the State Department viewed Trump’s personal attorney’s involvement in this situation as an additional threat to national security as if other red flags had not already been raised following the complaint. 

The whistleblower’s identity has still been classified, but what the public does know is that this individual is a CIA employee who was assigned to work at the White House. The individual’s identity has been withheld thus far in order to ensure the safety of the individual. Attorneys representing the whistleblower have indicated that their client is willing to testify in front of the House of Representatives, with potential to subsequently testify in front of the Senate as well.

This is an ongoing and developing story.