Trump–Ukraine scandal

From May to August 2019, President of the United States Donald Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani repeatedly pressed the Government of Ukraine to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter. A report released on September 25, 2019, stated that Trump would talk with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky only if they discussed Biden. In September 2019, media outlets and several members of the House began to publicly speculate or implicated that Trump had placed a hold on military aid to Ukraine.

A whistleblower complaint filed by a CIA officer asserted that after Trump spoke on the phone with Zelensky, senior White House officials worked to "lock down" the complete official transcript of the call on a highly restricted computer system. Initially the complaint was withheld from Congress at the direction of the White House and the Department of Justice. By law, such a complaint is supposed to be forwarded to the congressional intelligence committees within seven days. The complaint was released to congressional intelligence committees on September 25, 2019, 30 days after the complaint was filed, and a redacted version of the complaint was made public the next morning.

The controversy triggered the commencement of the formal process of impeachment inquiries against Trump on September 24, 2019, with House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi directing six House committee chairmen to proceed "under that umbrella of impeachment inquiry". Minutes earlier, the Senate had adopted by unanimous consent a sense of the Senate resolution calling for the whistleblower complaint to be immediately transmitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Background

In 2014, the Obama administration was trying to support the new Yatsenyuk government in Ukraine diplomatically, and then–Vice-President Joe Biden was "at the forefront" of those efforts. He traveled to Kiev on April 22, 2014, and urged the Ukraine government "to reduce its dependence on Russia for supplies of natural gas". He discussed how the United States could help provide technical expertise for expanding domestic production of natural gas.

In April 2014, Biden's son, Hunter Biden, joined the board of directors of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company. Burisma is the largest non-governmental natural gas producer in Ukraine. Hunter, an attorney with Boies Schiller Flexner, was hired to help Burisma with "transparency, corporate governance and responsibility, international expansion", and his firm was also retained by Burisma. He was paid a varying amount, up to $50,000 a month, for his services. In a December 2015 interview, Joe Biden said that he had never discussed Hunter's work at Burisma.

Since 2012, the Ukrainian prosecutor general had been investigating Burisma's owner, oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky, over allegations of money laundering, tax evasion, and corruption. In 2015, Viktor Shokin became the prosecutor general, inheriting the investigation. The Obama administration and other governments and non-governmental organizations soon became concerned that Shokin was not adequately pursuing corruption in Ukraine, was protecting the political elite, and was regarded as "an obstacle to anti-corruption efforts". Among other issues, he was slow-walking the investigation into Zlochevsky and Burisma, to the extent that Obama administration officials were considering launching their own criminal investigation into the company for possible money laundering. Shokin has stated he believes he was fired because of his Burisma investigation, where Hunter Biden was allegedly a subject; however, that investigation was dormant at the time Shokin was fired. In March 2016 then-vice president Biden issued an ultimatum to the Ukrainian parliament that $1 billion in loan guarantees would be withheld unless Shokin was removed. As of September 2019, there is no evidence that Biden acted to protect his son's involvement with Burisma, although Trump, Giuliani and their allies have fueled speculation. Shokin was ousted within the month. His successor, Yuriy Lutsenko, initially took a hard line against Burisma, but within a year he announced that all legal proceedings and pending criminal allegations against Zlochevsky had been "fully closed". In a related 2014 investigation by the United Kingdom, British authorities froze U.K. bank accounts tied to Zlochevsky; however, the investigation was later closed due to a lack of evidence. Lutsenko stated in May 2019 that there was no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens, but he was planning to provide information to attorney general Bill Barr about Burisma board payments so American authorities could verify whether Hunter Biden had paid US taxes.

Since at least May 2019, Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani has been pushing for Volodymyr Zelensky, the newly elected president of Ukraine, to investigate Burisma, as well as to check if there were any irregularities in the Ukrainian investigation of Paul Manafort. He said such investigations would be beneficial to his client, Trump, and that his efforts had Trump's full support. Giuliani's efforts began as an attempt to provide a pretext for Trump to pardon Manafort, who had been convicted of eight felony counts in August 2018. On May 10 Giuliani canceled a scheduled trip to Ukraine where he had intended to urge president-elect Zelensky to pursue inquiries into Hunter Biden, as well as whether Democrats colluded with Ukrainians to release information about Manafort. Giuliani claimed he has sworn statements from five Ukrainians stating they were brought into the Obama White House in January 2016 and told to "go dig up dirt on Trump and Manafort", although he has not produced evidence for the claim. Giuliani asserted he cancelled the trip because he had been "set up" by Ukrainians who objected to his efforts, and blamed Democrats for trying to "spin" the trip. Giuliani met with Ukranian officials to press the case for an investigation in June 2019 and August 2019.

Whistleblower complaint

Submission of complaint and withholding from Congress

Anonymous whistleblower complaint regarding a telephone conversation between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky

On August 12, 2019, an unnamed CIA officer filed a whistleblower complaint with Michael Atkinson, the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community (ICIG), under the provisions of the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act (ICWPA). Atkinson looked into the complaint, and interviewed several government officials whom the whistleblower identified as having information to substantiate his claims. On August 26, having found the complaint to be both "credible" and "of urgent concern" (as defined by the ICWPA), Atkinson transmitted the complaint to Joseph Maguire, the acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI).

Under ICWPA, the DNI "shall" within seven days of receipt forward the complaint to the Senate and House Intelligence Committees. Maguire did not do so, and the deadline passed on September 2. On September 9 Atkinson wrote to several lawmakers, telling them about the existence of the whistleblower report, which Maguire had not forwarded to Congress. On September 10, House Intelligence Committee (HPSCI) chairman Adam Schiff wrote to Maguire, asking why he had not provided it. According to Schiff, Maguire stated he had been told to withhold it on direction from a "higher authority" because it involved an "issue of privileged communications". Schiff stated he was also told "the complaint concerns conduct by someone outside of the Intelligence Community." The Trump administration withheld the complaint on the basis of the Justice Department's assertion that the complaint was not within the purview of the ICWPA. On September 13, Schiff subpoenaed Maguire to appear before the HPSCI, and Maguire agreed to testify on September 26. The Washington Post reported that Maguire threatened to resign if the White House sought to constrain his testimony, although Maguire later denied that he had contemplated resigning.

On September 18, The Washington Post broke the story of the whistleblower report, saying that the complaint concerned a "promise" Trump had made during communication with an unnamed foreign leader. White House records showed Trump had made communications or interactions with five foreign leaders during the five weeks before the whistleblower complaint was filed. During a previously scheduled closed-door hearing before the HPSCI on September 19, Atkinson told lawmakers that the complaint referred to a series of events, and that he disagreed with the position that the complaint lay outside the scope of the ICWPA, but declined to provide details. On September 19, The Washington Post reported that the complaint related to Ukraine.

After the ICIG found that the call was a possible violation of federal campaign finance laws, which prohibits the solicitation of foreign contributions, the ICIG referred the matter to the FBI, and the DNI referred the matter to the U.S. Department of Justice for a possible criminal investigation of Trump's actions. A Justice Department official said that that the ICIG suspected that the call could have broken federal law if Trump's request to the Ukrainian government to investigate a political opponent constituted the solicitation of campaign contribution from a foreign government. According to a Justice Department spokeswoman, the department's criminal division reviewed "the official record of the call" and determined that there was no campaign finance violation. The Justice Department's determination not to launch an investigation took only weeks; the department did not conduct interviews or take steps beyond reviewing the call record. A senior Justice Department official told The Washington Post that the Justice Department had determined that Trump's conduct did not constitute the solicitation of a quantifiable "thing of value" subject to the campaign finance laws. The Justice Department's review looked into whether there was evidence of a campaign violation law, and did not look into possible violations of federal corruption statutes. Some legal experts said there seemed to be evidence warranting an investigation into both; for example, Richard L. Hasen, an election-law scholar, believes that the provision of opposition research—i.e., valuable information on political rivals—could be considered a contribution under campaign-finance law.

Release and substance of the complaint

On September 24, the top Democrats of the House and Senate intelligence committees said an attorney for the whistleblower had contacted the committees about providing testimony. Members and staff of congressional intelligence committees were allowed to examine the whistleblower complaint on September 25. After the release of the whistleblower complaint to congressional committees, Republican Senator Ben Sasse called the complaint contents "really troubling" and Republican Senator Mitt Romney called it "troubling to the extreme". The House Intelligence Committee released the declassified, redacted version of the complaint on September 26.

In the complaint, the whistleblower stated that Trump abused the powers of his office for personal gain and put national security in danger, and that White House officials engaged in a cover-up. The whistleblower wrote: "In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election. This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President's main domestic political rivals." In addition to the July 25 phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian president Zelensky, the whistleblower alleged that Giuliani, Trump's personal attorney, had engaged in a campaign to pressure Ukrainian authorities to pursue Joe Biden, including in an August 2 meeting in Madrid between Giuliani and Zelensky aide as "a direct followup" to the July 25 call and contact with a number of other officials in Zelensky's government, including his Chief of Staff, Andriy Bohdan, and the then-acting head of the Security Service of Ukraine, Ivan Bakanov. The whistleblower further alleged in the complaint that White House officials had tried to limit access to the record of Trump's telephone conversation with Zelensky, writing:

"In the days following the phone call, I learned from multiple U.S. officials that senior White House officials had intervened to 'lock down' all records of the phone call, especially the word-for-word transcript of the call that was produced — as is customary — by the White House Situation Room. This set of actions underscored to me that White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired in the call."

Communications with Ukrainian officials

In a July 25, 2019, phone call, Trump asked Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky (pictured) to investigate matters related to Hunter Biden.

On September 20, 2019, The Washington Post reported that Trump had in a July 25 conversation repeatedly pressed Ukrainian President Zelensky to investigate matters relating to Hunter Biden. The New York Times reported that Trump told Zelensky to speak to Giuliani, and according to The Wall Street Journal he urged Zelensky "about eight times" to work with Giuliani and investigate Biden's son. On September 22, Trump acknowledged that he had discussed Joe Biden during the call with Zelensky, and that he had said, "we don't want our people like Vice President Biden and his son creating to the corruption already in the Ukraine."

Days before Trump's July 25 call with Zelensky, Giuliani spoke on the phone with Zelensky aide Andriy Yermak about a Biden investigation, as well as a prospective White House meeting between Zelensky and Trump that was sought by Ukrainian officials. According to Zelensky's advisor Serhiy Leshchenko, Trump was only willing to have a phone conversation with Zelensky on the precondition that they discuss the possibility of investigating the Biden family. Leshchenko later sought to back track his comments, saying that he did not know if officials had viewed discussing Biden as a precondition for a meeting. Days after the Trump call, Giuliani met with Yermak in Madrid. Giuliani stated on September 23 that the State Department had asked him to "go on a mission for them" to speak with Yermak. The State Department had stated on August 22 that its Ukraine envoy Kurt Volker had connected the men, but that Giuliani was acting as a private citizen and Trump attorney, although he briefed the State Department after the trip. American embassy officials in Kiev repeatedly expressed concerns about Giuliani's meetings. Giuliani stated he told Yermak, "Your country owes it to us and to your country to find out what really happened." Yermak stated he was not clear if Giuliani was representing Trump, but Giuliani stated he was not, and the White House referred questions about Giuliani's role to the State Department, which did not respond. Appearing on television on September 19, Giuliani first denied he had asked Ukrainian officials to investigate Joe Biden, but moments later stated, "of course I did."

On September 25, the administration released the White House's five-page, declassified memorandum of the July 25 phone call between Trump and Zelensky. In the call, Trump pressed for an investigation into his political rivals, including Joe Biden, saying, "I would like to have the [U.S.] Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it." Trump also presented his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, as a key U.S. contact for Ukraine, although Giuliani holds no official U.S. government position. Trump stated three times that he would ask both Attorney General William Barr and Giuliani to call Zelensky, and added, "So whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great." In response, Zelensky said that his candidate for Ukraine's chief prosecutor "will look into the situation, specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue." After Zelensky made this promise, Trump offered to meet with Zelensky at the White House. On the same call with Zelensky, Trump espoused the conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton's email server was in Ukraine; criticized the U.S.'s European allies (in particular Germany), and disparaged the former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, a career U.S. diplomat whom the Trump administration had abruptly recalled several months earlier.

Withholding Ukrainian military aid

Congress appropriated $400 million in military aid to Ukraine for fiscal year 2019, to be used to spend on weapons and other equipment as well as programs to assist the Ukrainian military in combating Russian aggression and Russian-backed separatists of the self-proclaimed separatist entities in eastern Ukraine. The administration notified Congress in February 2019 and May 2019 that it intended to release this aid to Ukraine. Despite the notifications to Congress, in mid-July 2019, the Trump administration placed military aid to Ukraine on hold. The Washington Post reported on September 23 that at least a week before his July 25 call with Zelensky, Trump directed his acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to withhold $400 million in military aid to Ukraine. This directive was conveyed by the Office of Management and Budget to the State Department and Pentagon, stating Trump had concerns about whether the money should be spent, with instructions to tell lawmakers that the funds were being delayed due to an "interagency process."

In the July 25 call with Trump, Zelensky thanked Trump for the U.S.'s "great support in the area of defense" (an apparent reference to military aid). Trump responded by asking Zelensky to "do us a favor" by investigating CrowdStrike, an American cybersecurity firm that investigated the cyberattacks against the Democratic National Committee in 2015 and 2016, and was one of three firms whose analysis assisted the U.S. intelligence community in determining that Russian intelligence was responsible for the DNC hack. Trump also asked Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden and his son. Trump himself didn't use the words "military aid" in the released transcript of the July 25 call. Ukraine relies on extensive American military aid to fight Russian-backed separatists in the Donbass, and the Trump administration's suspension of the Congressionally-mandated aid was reportedly a shock to Ukrainian government officials. Ukraine reportedly did not know until August that it was being withheld.

On September 9, before news of the whistleblower complaint, three Democratic-controlled House committees — the Committee on Foreign Affairs, the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and the Committee on Oversight and Reform — announced they would investigate whether Trump and Giuliani attempted to coerce Ukraine into investigating the Bidens, by withholding the military aid. On September 12, the Trump administration released the military aid.

In a September 20 tweet, Giuliani seemed to confirm suspicion that there was a connection between the withholding of military assistance funds and the investigation he and Trump wanted Ukraine to undertake. He said, "The reality is that the President of the United States, whoever he is, has every right to tell the president of another country you better straighten out the corruption in your country if you want me to give you a lot of money. If you're so damn corrupt that you can't investigate allegations -- our money is going to get squandered." Trump himself appeared to make a similar connection on September 23, telling reporters "We want to make sure that country is honest. It's very important to talk about corruption. If you don't talk about corruption, why would you give money to a country that you think is corrupt?" Trump later clarified, "I did not make a statement that 'you have to do this or I'm not going to give you aid.' I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't do that," and "I put no pressure on them whatsoever. I could have. I think it would probably, possibly have been ok if I did. But I didn't. I didn't put any pressure on them whatsoever."

Trump has offered inconsistent justifications for withholding the aid. Originally, he said that the aid was not released due to "corruption" in the country and that the topic of conversation with Volodymyr Zelensky was about "the fact that we don't want our people, like vice-president Biden and his son, [adding] to the corruption already in the Ukraine." He later disputed his original statement, and said that it was not initially released due to a lack of aid relief from other European nations. Trump later said that this hold was unrelated to his comments on Biden and later released the aid.

Impeachment proceedings

Main article: Impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump

On September 24, 2019, a formal impeachment inquiry by the House of Representatives into President Trump was announced by House Speaker Pelosi. Six House committees will begin or continue their formal inquiries. Pelosi said, "The actions of the Trump presidency have revealed the dishonorable fact of the president's betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections. Therefore, today, I am announcing the House of Representatives is moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry."

The president quickly replied on Twitter, saying the Democrats "ruined and demeaned" a day of significance at the United Nations, where he was addressing the General Assembly. He also called the inquiry "Witch Hunt garbage." The decision to look into impeachment came after Pelosi consulted with allies, and after reports over a seven day period "... that Trump may have pressured a foreign leader to investigate former vice president and potential 2020 campaign rival Joe Biden and his family."

A memorandum with a non-verbatim record of the call between Trump and Zelensky released by the White House

Reactions

Congress

On September 22, House speaker Nancy Pelosi stated that if the administration continued to withhold the whistleblower complaint from Congress, "they will be entering a grave new chapter of lawlessness which will take us into a whole new stage of investigation." House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff, stating he had previously been "very reluctant" to initiate impeachment proceedings against Trump, said, "we may very well have crossed the Rubicon here." The vast majority of Republicans did not comment on the matter, with notable exceptions of senators Lindsey Graham and Mitt Romney, both of whom suggested Trump should release information to resolve the situation.

On September 24, the Senate adopted by unanimous consent a sense of the Senate resolution calling for the whistleblower complaint to be immediately transmitted to the House and Senate intelligence committees.

Following the release of the memorandum of conversation between Trump and Zelenskiy, Senator Romney called the memorandum "deeply troubling" and asked for more information to be made public. Pelosi stated that the memorandum "confirms that the President engaged in behavior that undermines the integrity of our elections, the dignity of the office he holds and our national security."

President Trump

President Trump answers questions from the press on September 22, 2019

In his initial comments to reporters on September 20, Trump characterized the whistleblower as "partisan", but added, "I do not know the identity of the whistleblower" and called the story "just another political hack job." (Michael Atkinson, the ICIG who found the whistleblower complaint credible and urgent, was appointed during the Trump administration.) Trump also said, "Somebody ought to look into Joe Biden's statement, because it was disgraceful where he talked about billions of dollars that he's not giving to a certain country unless a certain prosecutor is taken off the case. So somebody ought to look into that," suggesting the press was not reporting it. The press has reported on the Joe Biden matter for months but found no evidence of wrongdoing. On September 23, Trump asserted, "If a Republican ever did what Joe Biden did, if a Republican ever said what Joe Biden said, they'd be getting the electric chair right now." On September 25, during a meeting with Ukrainian President Zelensky, Trump said: "I want [Zelensky] to do whatever he can. Biden's son walks out of Ukraine with millions and millions of dollars. I think it's a horrible thing." Trump denied explicitly tying U.S. military aid to Ukraine's corruption investigation involving Burisma Holdings.

On September 27, Trump characterized the whistleblower as "close to a spy," adding, "you know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? With spies and treason, right? We used to handle them a little differently than we do now."

Ukraine

Ukrainian President Zelensky meets with U.S. President Trump in New York City on September 25, 2019

On September 20, Roman Truba, head of the Ukraine State Bureau of Investigations, told The Daily Beast that his agency had not investigated the Biden-Burisma connection and there were no signs of illegality there. Anton Geraschenko, a senior advisor to the Ukraine interior minister, told The Daily Beast that Ukraine will open such an investigation if there is an official request, along with details of why an investigation is needed and what to look for. Trump's requests have come through unofficial representatives such as Giuliani. On September 22, Senator Chris Murphy said Zelensky told him he had no intention to get involved with an American election.

In an interview released on September 24, Ukrainian diplomat and politician Valentyn Nalyvaichenko told The Daily Beast that Ukrainian authorities would be reopening corruption investigations into multiple individuals and organizations including, potentially, Burisma, Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, TV host Larry King, and former prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko. King was suspected of receiving slush fund payments recorded in the "black ledger" that also named Manafort. Nalyvaichenko accused Lutsenko of having been in communication with associates of Trump "for vindictive purposes".

During a joint press conference with Trump to reporters gathered at the United Nations General Assembly, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told reporters on September 25: "We had I think good phone call. It was normal. We spoke about many things. So, I think, and you read it, that nobody pushed me." Ukrainian foreign minister Vadym Prystaiko told a Ukrainian news outlet on September 21 that "I know what the conversation was about and I think there was no pressure. This conversation was long, friendly, and it touched on many questions, sometimes requiring serious answers." Prystaiko was also quoted as saying, "I want to say that we are an independent state, we have our secrets."

Former U.S. officials

More than 300 former U.S. foreign policy and national security officials who served under both Democratic and Republican administrations signed an open letter on September 27, supporting a congressional impeachment inquiry into Trump's conduct relating to Ukraine. The officials, who formerly served in the U.S. Intelligence Community, National Security Council, and departments of Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security, wrote that Trump's actions raised "a profound national security concern" and that "President Trump appears to have leveraged the authority and resources of the highest office in the land to invite additional foreign interference into our democratic processes. If we fail to speak up — and act — now our foreign policy and national security will officially be on offer to those who can most effectively fulfill the President's personal prerogatives."

The American Foreign Service Association and American Academy of Diplomacy, representing members of the U.S. diplomatic corps, expressed alarm at Trump's disparagement of the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine in his call with Zelensky.

American press coverage

The day after the whistleblower complaint was released, the print editions of The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today each ran large front-page headlines characterizing the matter as an alleged White House "cover-up."

Fox News anchor Chris Wallace characterized the spin by Trump allies in the immediate aftermath of the whistleblower complaint becoming public as "astonishing" and "deeply misleading."

Conspiracy theories

In late-September television appearances, Giuliani asserted that George Soros, a frequent subject of conservative conspiracy theories, was running an anti-Trump scheme in Ukraine while Biden was protecting Soros from prosecution there. Appearing on Hannity, attorneys Joseph diGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing asserted the whistleblower is linked to Soros.

Various Fox News personalities, as well as Trump personal attorney Jay Sekulow, speculated that the whistleblower must have had "outside help" because the complaint was well written.

During the July 25, 2019, phone call between President Trump and President Zelensky, Mr. Trump recounted a far-right conspiracy theory, pushed by Russian trolls. The overarching theme is: the "Democratic National Committee fabricat[ed] all the evidence in Russia's [2015-2016] breach of [their] network." Crowdstrike was the security firm that first investigated and determined that Russian military intelligence (GRU) was behind infiltrating the network. Crowdstrike's co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch is an American citizen.

But, according to the hoax, Alperovitch is a Ukrainian who was ordered by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to discredit Russia for the election interference and he was personally motivated to get even with Vladimir Putin. Also, according to the theory, Crowdstrike is owned by a rich Ukrainian and the actual server involved in the hack is in Ukraine. The theory additionally says FBI agents were not allowed to examine the server because such action would expose the DNC plot, although the Mueller Report stated images and traffic logs of the DNC servers were provided to the FBI. This conspiracy theory originated from a "GRU persona, 'Guccifer 2.0,' created to cast doubt on Russia’s culpability in the DNC [intrusion]."

See also

• Foreign interference in the 2020 United States elections
• Impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump
• List of federal political scandals in the United States
• Russian military intervention in Ukraine (2014–present)
• Timeline of investigations into Trump and Russia (2019)

External links

• Declassified whistleblower complaint of August 12, 2019 (released in redacted form on September 26, 2019)
• Declassified letter from Intelligence Community Inspector General to acting Director of National Intelligence (August 26, 2019), regarding the whistleblower complaint
• Memorandum of the July 25, 2019, telephone conversation between US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy