Impeachment: How Did We Get Here?
It all started on August 12th, when a whistleblower in the Intelligence Community filed a complaint. At the time, it was unclear where the whistleblower worked, but the Washington Post has since reported that the person once worked on the staff of the White House National Security Council. As of right now, it is still unclear who that person specifically is.
That whistleblower complaint was filed with the Intelligence Community Inspector General, or the ICIG. The ICIG is basically a watchdog who investigates allegations and complaints of misconduct in the United States intelligence community. Right now, the ICIG is Michael Atkinson who was a former Justice Department official. Mr. Atkinson was confirmed to the post in 2018 after being nominated by Trump.
This whistleblower filed their complaint with the ICIG under a law called the Intelligence Community Whistleblower’s Protection Act. That law says that once a misconduct complaint is filed, the ICIG has fourteen days to decide if the complaint is both credible and urgent concern. ICIG Atkinson determined that it met both criteria. If the complaint meets those criteria, the law says that the complaint must be sent to the office of the Director of National Intelligence. Atkinson followed the law and sent the complaint to acting Director of National Intelligence, Joseph Maguire, who was put in the position in early August. Maguire then had seven days to send the full complaint to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.
That gave him until September 2nd to give the complaint in full to the congressional committees. But Maguire did not do so.
In fact, he didn’t send anything until September 9th, a full week after he was required to send the complaint to Congress. And instead of sending the full complaint as required, Atkinson merely sent a letter to the House Intelligence Committee informing them of the complaint’s existence.
The next day, September 10th, Representative Adam Schiff, the chairman of this committee, sent a letter to Maguire demanding that he send the complaint in full and accusing him of breaking the law by not doing so earlier. Schiff also indicated in the letter that the Committee thought the White House could be interfering and preventing the complaint from being sent to congress.
Three days later, on September 13th, the lawyer for the office of the Director of National Intelligence responded to Schiff in a letter. The lawyer argued that Maguire was under no obligation to turn over the complaint because they’d decided it was not an urgent concern and because the President, who was the focus of the complaint, is not a member of the intelligence community.
That same day, Schiff responded with another letter, in which he stated that the Director of National Intelligence did not have the legal authority to overrule an ICIG decision or withhold it from the Congressional Intelligence Committee. As Schiff points out, this is the first time since the whistleblower procedure has been in place that a Director of Intelligence overruled the ICIG to withhold a whistleblower complaint. This move was unprecedented, and it also gave Schiff reason to suspect the President’s involvement in the whistleblower’s report, as demonstrated from the following excerpt:
“The Committee can only conclude, based on this remarkable confluence of factors, that the serious misconduct at issue involves the President of the United States and/or other senior White House or Administration officials.”
Moreover, Schiff began to suspect that the President may not just be the suspect identified in the report but also the person responsible for attempting to cover it up.
“This raises grave concerns that your office, together with the Department of Justice and possibly the White House, are engaged in an unlawful effort to protect the President and conceal from the Committee information related to his possible ‘serious or flagrant’ misconduct, abuse of power, or violation of law.”
Then, on the 16th, newspapers began to receive leaks regarding the contents of the report. The Washington Post reported that the complaint in question involved Trump’s communications with a foreign leader. They received this information from two foreign intelligence officials who gave them the following information:
“Trump’s interaction with the foreign leader included a, quote, ‘promise’ that was regarded as so troubling that it prompted an official in the U.S. Intelligence Community to file a formal whistleblower complaint with the Inspector General for the Intelligence Community.”
More details emerged the next day, when it was reported that people familiar with the complaints said it had to do, at least in part, with Ukraine. That Friday, sources close to the matter said that the call had happened between President Trump and the newly-elected President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky back in July. During that call, Trump had asked the Ukrainian president to investigate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, who had served on a board of a Ukrainian gas company while his father was U.S. Vice President. Joe Biden is now one of Trump’s biggest political rivals and a Presidential candidate for 2020. This has led many to wonder whether Trump was attempting to leverage the $250 million of military and intelligence aid promised by the United States to Ukraine as a way of getting Ukraine to do a political favor for the President.
On September 24th, Speaker Of The House Nancy Pelosi announced that the House would begin an impeachment inquiry to determine if Trump’s actions with Ukraine or any connected cover-up would meet the Constitutional requirements to remove a President from office.
That impeachment inquiry is still in progress, creating a tense environment in Washington DC. Around the country, a majority of Americans support the impeachment inquiry. That number, which hovers around 55% depending on the poll, is significantly lower than the number of students here on campus who support impeachment. According to a recent poll of over thirty Eastside students, 74% support the impeachment inquiry.
The investigation is expected to take multiple months and, depending on the investigation’s findings, may not result in a vote on impeachment, but we will be sure to keep you updated as new details emerge.
If Trump is impeached after the inquiry has been completed, Vice President Mike Pence would become President.
