Speaker Nancy Pelosi met with her caucus on Tuesday and announced the House is beginning a formal impeachment inquiry of President Trump. The impetus for this is a whistleblower report Congress hasn’t seen, because the acting director of national intelligence overruled his inspector general, saying Congress isn’t entitled to see it. But we’ve been learning more and more about what’s in that report, and it seems to concern President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. On Wednesday morning, the White House released an approximate transcript of this conversation, and it shows Trump pushing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for an investigation of the Bidens and urging him to work with Rudy Giuliani on such an investigation.
Is pushing a foreign country to investigate your political rival, withholding aid from that country, possibly linking the two matters -- is any of that a crime?
And regarding impeachment: since President Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, essentially admitted to this on national TV, do Democrats have what they need or is an investigation or inquiry necessary? Ken and Josh discuss Democrats’ impeachment strategy, and the politics of assembling either a broad or narrow impeachment articles. Should the president’s lies about the hush money payments figure into this?