Did President Trump Break The Law And Will He Be Impeached?

By: Dejon Virgo

Credit: news.com.au

On September 19th the Washington Post reported that someone in the intelligence community filed a complaint with Intelligence Inspector General Michael Atkinson on August 12th about a phone call President Donald J. Trump had with the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky. 

The whistleblower said in the complaint that he heard from officials that Trump asked Zelensky to investigate his political opponent for the presidency, former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. 

The complaint also states that Trump offered his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and the Attorney General of the United States, William Barr, to help the Ukrainians investigate the Bidens. On the third page of the complaint, the whistleblower alleged that a White House official heard Trump alluded to the military aid that he froze a couple of days before the phone call. 

The informant also states that the lawyers in the White House told the staff to lock down the transcript of the call in a highly classified server which alludes to a cover-up. On page seven of the complaint, the whistleblower says that the State Department was worried about Giuliani’s involvement in Ukraine and a threat to national security. 

The whistleblower restates the concerns that State Department officials had with Trump advising Giuliani to try to pressure Ukrianian officials to investigate the Bidens. Inspector General Atkinson’s letter to the Acting Director of National Intelligence, Joseph Maguire, hides the identity of the whistleblower. 

The letter also stated that the whistleblower did not have direct knowledge of Trump’s call with Zelensky and may have a political bias against Trump, but Atkinson still believed that the complaint was credible and the whistleblower followed everything by the books. This whole whistleblower complaint is what made Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, launch a formal impeachment inquiry against Trump on September 24th.

According to Politico the whistleblower complaint gave Democrats enough reason to open the inquiry, which is not a formal impeachment but an investigation into whether the House should impeach the president. Pelosi told six committees to handle the investigation into impeachment: the Judiciary, Intelligence, Oversight and Reform, Foreign Affairs, Financial Services, and Ways and Means committees. 

Trump and Republicans in the White House have pushed back on the inquiry, saying that Democrats are overreaching and that there was no quid pro quo. According to the New York Times, the allegations against Trump are that as President he has tried to use his power to pressure a foreign leader to investigate his political rival and a debunked conspiracy theory about the 2016 election. 

The summary of the transcript of the call with Zelensky, released on September 25th, showed that Trump asked Zelensky to do him a favor and investigate the Bidens. On October 4th, text messages were released between State Department officials that showed how deep Guliani was involved with Ukraine and alluded to a quid pro quo with the military aid that Trump withheld from the country. 

One message says, “Are we now saying that security assistance and WH meeting are conditioned on investigations,” suggesting that the State Department officials and Giuliani tried to get Ukraine to start the investigations. 

According to Vox, the president and Giuliani believe that Biden pressured Ukraine to fire a prosecutor that was investigating a company that his son was on the board of.

While it is true that Biden pressured the prosecutor, there is no evidence that he did it to help his son because he wasn’t the only one who wanted the individual out. The EU, IMF, anti-corruption activists in Ukraine, US government, and even some Republican Senators wanted the prosecutor fired so it was an organized effort. 

The US intelligence agencies have long debunked the conspiracy theory that Ukraine was involved in the 2016 election. It was Russia, not Ukraine, that had interfered. 

On October 3rd Trump told reporters on the White House lawn that China should investigate the Bidens, committing an impeachable offense on camera by asking another foreign country to intervene in the 2020 election. 

Everything that has happened within the last few weeks is building up for an impeachment and constitutional showdown between the executive and legislative branches of government.