Here’s the Latest on Trump’s Impeachment
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Just under a month ago, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, formally announced an impeachment inquiry against President Donald J. Trump. Since then, there have been an overwhelming number of developments, with so many stories breaking simultaneously that keeping track of the ongoing impeachment saga can prove difficult. To that end, here are the latest updates on Trump’s impeachment.
A U.S. ambassador implicated Trump
In testimony delivered to Congress yesterday, U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland said that President Trump ordered him to collaborate with Rudy Giuliani on Ukraine. Guiliani, Trump’s current lawyer and the former mayor of New York, began pushing for Ukraine to investigate Trump’s political rivals – the activity at the center of the ongoing impeachment flurry – long before the current impeachment inquiry began.
Sondland said that encouraging Ukraine to investigate Trump’s political rivals was mutually exclusive with fortifying the vital U.S.-Ukraine alliance. He also claimed that he was unaware Trump’s agenda included pushing Ukraine to investigate political rivals until “much later.”
Rick Perry implicated Trump
Former Texas Governor and current U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry similarly implicated Trump in regards to Ukraine. In a recent interview, Perry said that Trump ordered him to talk with Guiliani about Ukraine corruption concerns. Perry claimed that Trump’s main concern with the European country was that “people in Ukraine” tried to “beat” him during the 2016 presidential election, in which Russia – a country that has a long, complicated history with Ukraine – definitively interfered. Perry also said that Guiliani cited baseless claims as Trump’s reasons for mistrusting Ukraine.
Despite this news, Perry claims that his decision to depart the Trump administration is unrelated to the impeachment inquiry. Perry insists that he simply wants to return to Texas and escape Washington, D.C.
Mick Mulvaney implicated Trump
Rick Perry and Gordon Sondland held nothing back in implicating Trump. By comparison, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney’s recent comments may have accidentally revealed information key to the ongoing impeachment inquiry. After Mulvaney said that President Trump froze hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to Ukraine to pressure the country into investigating Trump’s political rivals, he later said that he was only aware of Trump asking Ukraine to investigate a Democratic National Committee server hacked during the 2016 election. Trump’s Department of Justice has since distanced itself from Mulvaney’s comments, a rare move for a federal executive department to take. Trump’s attorney Jay Sekulow also claimed that none of the president’s lawyers were consulted on Mulvaney’s comments.
The lead impeachment inquiry lawyer spoke in court
Although Speaker Pelosi regularly speaks to the press about the impeachment inquiry, recent courtroom comments from the inquiry’s lead lawyer have been even more revealing. Last week, Douglas Letter told a federal judge that even if Trump’s activity with Ukraine is not found to be illegal, there could easily be obstruction of justice charges. Letter also said that merely lying to the American public could be grounds for impeachment.
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