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The Trump Impeachment Inquiry: What Happened Today
(about 3 hours later)
In an expansive letter to House Democratic leaders, the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, called the House’s impeachment inquiry illegitimate, saying the administration will not cooperate unless and until the House votes to open an investigation.
This evening, the White House vowed in an eight-page letter to House Democratic leaders that it would not cooperate with the impeachment inquiry, which it said was “partisan and unconstitutional” and in violation of President Trump’s due process rights.
Mr. Cipollone complained that the process implemented by the House’s committee chairmen is unfair, echoing the talking points of congressional Republicans.
The White House also blocked Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, from speaking with investigators, a decision Speaker Nancy Pelosi called an “abuse of power.” Mr. Sondland was one of the three envoys who discussed via text message a plan to secure the Ukrainian president’s commitment to investigate Mr. Trump’s rivals.
“You have designed and implemented your inquiry in a manner that violates fundamental fairness and constitutionally mandated due process,” the White House counsel declared. He added, “Put simply, you seek to overturn the results of the 2016 election and deprive the American people of the President they have freely chosen.”
Democrats in Congress have said they consider the failure to comply with their demands for information to be obstruction, a charge they say is itself worthy of impeachment. Even before the letter’s release, Representative Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said blocking Mr. Sondland from speaking was “strong evidence” of obstruction.
Earlier in the day, the Trump administration directed Gordon D. Sondland, the United States ambassador to the European Union, not to speak with investigators for three House committees.
This evening, Democrats subpoenaed Mr. Sondland for testimony and documents. Mr. Schiff said the State Department was withholding texts he had sent on a private device that were “deeply relevant” to the inquiry.
The decision to block Mr. Sondland, a top American diplomat involved in its pressure campaign on Ukraine, hours before he was scheduled to sit for a deposition in the basement of the Capitol, is certain to provoke an immediate conflict. House Democrats have repeatedly warned that if the administration tries to interfere with their investigation, it will be construed as obstruction, a charge they see as potentially worthy of impeachment.
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On Tuesday morning, Mr. Trump attacked the impeachment inquiry.
The showdown today felt like the most dramatic clash yet between the branches of government. Are we in what some might call a “constitutional crisis”? Amy Fiscus, our national security editor, answered that question for me between conversations with her reporters about pursuing leads.
Democrats from the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees did not immediately respond on Tuesday.
“It’s not a constitutional crisis, because that involves a failure of the separation of powers: one of the three branches of government defying one of the others in a way that the Constitution doesn’t resolve. The easiest example is the White House or Congress refusing to follow a Supreme Court ruling.
— Michael S. Schmidt and Nicholas Fandos
This is more of a standoff, or a brawl. It’s the latest in a long line of fights between lawmakers and presidential administrations over information. Congress can’t do oversight without it. But administrations can’t function without keeping some presidential deliberations secret. What’s unusual here is that Mr. Trump has declared all-out war on oversight efforts and the impeachment inquiry, not just a refusal to share information about a particular issue.”
Read more: Witness in Trump-Ukraine Matter Ordered Not to Speak in Impeachment Inquiry
Even some Republicans have privately been urging Mr. Trump to cooperate with the impeachment investigation. I stopped by the desk of my colleague Annie Karni, who covers the White House, to ask her about Mr. Trump’s defiance.
A White House official who listened to President Trump’s July phone call with Ukraine’s leader described it as “crazy,” “frightening,” and “completely lacking in substance related to national security,” according to a memo written by the whistle-blower at the center of the Ukraine scandal, a C.I.A. officer who spoke to the White House official.
Annie, you and Maggie Haberman wrote about anxiety in the West Wing over how to handle impeachment. Why has the president concluded that it’s better not to cooperate?
The White House official was “visibly shaken by what had transpired,” the C.I.A. officer wrote in his memo, one day after Mr. Trump pressured President Volodymyr Zelensky.
This is not a criminal investigation, like the Mueller investigation was. This is a political process. And they’re leaning heavily into that idea with the eight-page letter the White House counsel sent tonight. We also see that in the polls: How people view Trump’s actions and the actions of House Democrats is split by party.
A palpable sense of concern had already taken hold among at least some in the White House that the call had veered well outside the bounds of traditional diplomacy, the officer wrote.
We also already know how this story almost certainly ends: Mr. Trump is not going to be convicted by the Senate. Does it matter for him whether there are one or two charges? His, and the White House’s, calculation is: no.
“The official stated that there was already a conversation underway with White House lawyers about how to handle the discussion because, in the official’s view, the president had clearly committed a criminal act by urging a foreign power to investigate a U.S. person for the purposes of advancing his own re-election bid in 2020,” the C.I.A. officer wrote.
But isn’t that kind of resistance just going to harden Democrats’ belief that there’s some kind of cover-up?
— Nicholas Fandos
Some witnesses could be really bad for the president, so the White House wants to have a broad position that they’re not going to play along. There were differing opinions internally about the case of Sondland, who some people thought would have had a story to tell that would have been helpful to Trump. But they ultimately decided — really late at night — that their position was about something broader.
Read more: Trump’s Ukraine Call Was ‘Crazy’ and ‘Frightening,’ Official Told Whistle-Blower
Remember when they decided to release the transcript of Trump’s call with Ukraine’s president? In that case, they clearly made the opposite calculation: Looking like we’re hiding something is worse than the facts in the transcript, which were pretty bad. Now, they’ve basically decided that looking like they’re hiding something is better than looking like they’re cooperating with what they’re calling an illegitimate investigation. House Democrats have only had one witness so far, Kurt Volker, and look how much House Democrats got! They have in writing that there could have been a quid pro quo. What else could they find with even just one more?
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a staunch ally of President Trump, said Tuesday he will invite Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, to lay out his Ukraine theories before the committee.
A White House official who listened to Mr. Trump’s July phone call with Ukraine’s president described it as “crazy,” “frightening,” and “completely lacking in substance related to national security,” according to a memo written by a whistle-blower at the center of the Ukraine scandal.
Mr. Giuliani has led the push to enlist the Ukrainians to help investigate the business dealings of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s son and has embraced a conspiracy theory that Ukraine — not Russia — meddled in the 2016 election. Mr. Trump picked up on that theory in his now-infamous call to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in July when he asked about a “server” that could be in Ukraine.
Senator Lindsey Graham said he would invite Rudy Giuliani, who led the push for Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and embraced unfounded conspiracy theories about the 2016 election and Ukrainian corruption, to testify in the Senate.
The hearing promises to be something of a counterweight to the House impeachment inquiry.
Two new polls show growing support for the impeachment investigation. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that 55 percent of Americans approve of the inquiry, while a Washington Post-Schar School poll concluded that the number was 58 percent — the most support any poll has found so far. The Post highlighted that 28 percent of Republicans now support the inquiry.
“Given the House of Representatives’ behavior, it is time for the Senate to inquire about corruption and other improprieties involving Ukraine,” Mr. Graham said.
Our graphics team has worked up this handy visual guide to the evidence has been collected in the inquiry, and what’s been requested:
With Democrats on the panel, the gambit might not be a slam dunk. Mr. Graham promised, “I will offer to Mr. Giuliani the opportunity to come before the Senate Judiciary Committee to inform the committee of his concerns,” to which Senator Kamala Harris, Democrat of California, responded, “Good. I have questions.”
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The Senate Intelligence Committee, striving to maintain bipartisan comity amid growing impeachment tensions, concluded on Tuesday that Moscow used social media in 2016 to boost Mr. Trump, damage Hillary Clinton and sow discord in the electorate.
The committee’s second report on Russia’s intervention in the election reached familiar conclusions through its 85 pages: Moscow’s Internet Research Agency targeted African Americans more than any other group, “engaged with unwitting Americans to further its reach beyond the digital realm,” with protests and petition, and is still at it.
“Russia is waging an information warfare campaign against the U.S. that didn’t start and didn’t end with the 2016 election,” said Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, the committee’s Republican chairman. “Their goal is broader: to sow societal discord and erode public confidence in the machinery of government.”
But the timing is auspicious, coming out as allies of Mr. Trump seek again to cloud voters’ understanding of Russia’s actions and shift blame onto Ukraine through unfounded conspiracy theories.
When Energy Secretary Rick Perry led an American delegation to the inauguration of Ukraine’s new president in May, he took the opportunity to suggest the names of Americans the new Ukrainian government might want to advise and oversee the country’s state-owned gas company.
Mr. Perry’s focus during the trip on Ukraine’s energy industry was in keeping with a push he had begun months earlier under the previous Ukrainian president, and it was consistent with United States policy of promoting anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine and greater energy independence from Russia.
But his actions during the trip have entangled him in a controversy about the pressure campaign waged by President Trump and his allies to pressure Mr. Zelensky to investigate Mr. Trump’s rivals.
Mr. Perry’s trip raised questions about whether he was seeking to provide help to certain Americans interested in gaining a foothold in the Ukrainian energy business at a time when the new Ukrainian government was looking to the United States for signals of support in its simmering conflict with Russia.
— Kenneth P. Vogel, Matina Stevis-Gridneff and Andrew E. Kramer
Read more: Rick Perry’s Focus on Gas Company Entangles Him in Ukraine Case
President Trump repeatedly pressured President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to investigate people and issues of political concern to Mr. Trump, including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Here’s a timeline of events since January.
A C.I.A. officer who was once detailed to the White House filed a whistle-blower complaint on Mr. Trump’s interactions with Mr. Zelensky. Read the complaint.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced in September that the House would open a formal impeachment proceeding in response to the whistle-blower’s complaint. Here’s how the impeachment process works.
House committees have issued subpoenas to the White House, the Defense Department, the budget office and other agencies for documents related to the impeachment investigation. Here’s the evidence that has been collected so far.
