OnPolitics: All things impeachment inquiry

FROM WASHINGTON AND BEYOND

Friday, September 27

President Donald Trump meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy at the InterContinental Barclay New York hotel during the United Nations General Assembly, Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2019, in New York. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) ORG XMIT: NYEV874

A lot has happened in the past seven days. We're going to spell it all out for you.

We have made it through a historic several days that will no doubt shape the next several weeks and months of American politics. We're going to take a bit of a different format this week to make sure you got a clear breakdown of what's happened in the past seven days.

First ... what is going on?

President Donald Trump is facing an impeachment inquiry. The announcement by Speaker of House Nancy Pelosi came Tuesday after a summary of a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky from July was released. That summary confirms previous reporting that Trump asked Zelensky to look into former Vice President Joe Biden's relationship with Ukraine, which would include the time his son Hunter Biden served on the board of directors of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Group.

So, a basic question is: Did the president of the United States ask a foreign leader to investigate a political rival to help his own re-election effort?

What's the deal with Burisma?

Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani have repeatedly asserted that Biden in 2016 pressured Ukraine to fire its prosecutor general to try to halt the investigation of Burisma. No evidence has emerged to support that claim . In fact, the concerns that Biden and other Obama administration officials expressed at the time were that the prosecutor wasn't doing enough to root out corruption. European allies shared those concerns. The prosecutor general was eventually voted out by Ukraine's parliament.

How did we get here? This seems like it happened really fast.

Last week, news reports began percolating about a whistleblower complaint in the U.S. intelligence community involving Trump's interactions with a foreign leader. Whistleblower complaints are required by law to be released to Congress, but the administration refused for weeks to hand it over. Over several days, it became known that the whistleblower complaint revolved around Trump's July call with Zelensky. Eventually, that led to the summary of their call being released, and then the impeachment inquiry. That all happened in the span of about 5 days.

So what was the testimony on Thursday about?

On Wednesday evening, the whistleblower complaint was released to some members of Congress. Democrats called it "deeply disturbing" and "credible." By Thursday morning, the whistleblower complaint was declassified and released for the general public to read. Hours later, acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire testified before the House Intelligence committee saying he believed the whistleblower did the right thing and that "everything involved in this matter is totally unprecedented." Meanwhile, Trump in a closed-door meeting likened the whistleblower to a "spy" and used the word "treason" while discussing the complaint, according to the New York Times.

Where do we go from here?

It's not clear yet. The U.S. House has only twice in its history impeached a president, and a sitting president has never been removed from office. (Nixon resigned before he could be impeached.) Pelosi told reporters Thursday that the impeachment inquiry will move forward under the House intelligence committee, but gave no deadline and said no conclusions have been made about what might be included in any articles of impeachment.

We'll be back next week with updates on this story, and keep checking usatoday.com/politics for the latest news. As always, thanks for reading. - Annah Aschbrenner