U.S. President Donald Trump took to Twitter again Friday to lash out at the media and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee as a formal impeachment inquiry moved forward in Congress over allegations Trump solicited Ukraine’s president to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a potential rival of Trump’s in the 2020 presidential election. 

Trump’s main target was Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff of California, who presided over Thursday’s questioning of the acting director of national intelligence about the handling of a whistleblower complaint.   

At the center of the complaint is a July 25, 2019, phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in which the whistleblower alleges: 

— Trump pressured Zelenskiy to investigate Biden and his son Hunter, who was at one time on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. 

— Trump suggested multiple times that Zelenskiy meet with his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and U.S. Attorney General William Barr about the investigation. 

— White House officials secured all records of the phone call in a separate electronic system used to store classified and sensitive information, a move denounced by Democrats as a cover-up. 

Normally, such an “urgent” complaint would have been forwarded to congressional intelligence committees within two weeks. But the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, missed a Sept. 2 deadline, defying congressional demands for the document and a subpoena for his testimony.

Congress finally received the whistleblower complaint on Sept. 25. The next day, Maguire appeared before the House Intelligence Committee in a public hearing. He testified that he took the complaint to White House lawyers, then Justice Department lawyers, who advised it was not urgent enough to send to Congress. Maguire refused to acknowledge whether he spoke to Trump about the whistleblower’s complaint.

Protected by law 

Federal law protects government workers from retribution if they report wrongdoing by government officials. Such whistleblowers are granted anonymity for their protection. 

Video has surfaced of Trump attacking the whistleblower’s sources. Speaking at a closed-door event at the U.S. Mission to the U.N on Thursday, Trump described the sources as “close to a spy,” suggesting it was an act of treason, punishable by death. 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said she was concerned about Trump’s remarks, promising that the impeachment committees would ensure there was no retaliation for people who came forward with information. She did not set out a timeline for the impeachment process, although she told MSNBC “it doesn’t have to drag on.” 

Trump maintained he had a “perfect conversation” with his Ukrainian counterpart and was just trying to get his government to investigate corruption. The White House released a summary of Trump’s phone call with Zelenskiy, which shows Trump raising the issue of investigating the Bidens. The call took place while U.S. military aid to Ukraine was suspended by Trump. 

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Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives began the formal process of impeaching U.S. President Donald Trump this week.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the first step in the impeachment process Tuesday, following reports that a whistleblower filed a complaint alleging Trump sought foreign interference into the 2020 election.

What triggered House Democrats to begin a formal impeachment inquiry?

Investigations into Trump’s administration and his campaign’s actions during the 2016 presidential election were already underway in six House committees at the beginning of this week. Many House Democrats already backed impeachment, but until this week opposition leaders had resisted calls for launching the impeachment inquiry. They believed such an inquiry had no chance of passing the Republican-led Senate and could end up hurting Democrats in the 2020 election.

The new whistleblower report appears to have dramatically shifted the politics of the issue.

Several additional House Democrats came forward in support of an impeachment inquiry. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Tuesday the House would embark on the first step of the impeachment process to determine if Trump had committed the “high crimes and misdemeanors” the U.S. Constitution lays out as the standard for removing a president from office.

What do we know about the whistleblower?

The whistleblower remains anonymous under laws protecting government workers who expose wrongdoing. But he or she is a U.S. government employee who had knowledge of Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and spoke to other U.S. officials who shared similar concerns over the legality of the president’s actions.  Although the whistleblower did not have direct knowledge of the Zelenskiy phone call, an independent investigator for the U.S. government found the allegations were credible.

The New York Times has reported the whistleblower is a CIA employee who has spent some time working in the White House during the Trump administration.
 
The complaint alleges a number of offenses on the part of Trump and U.S. officials. The most serious of the allegations is that Trump implied congressionally-approved U.S. aid to Ukraine was contingent upon Zelenskiy’s government providing information on the son of 2020 presidential election rival, Joe Biden. The complaint also alleges White House officials were aware of the gravity of Trump’s actions and covered up records of the phone call.

How was the whistleblower complaint handled by the government?

Democrats are pledging to investigate both the allegations in the complaint as well as how the Trump administration handled it.

Under the whistleblower process, the complaint was summarized in a letter that was addressed to senior lawmakers in the House and Senate committees, which oversee the intelligence community. That August 12 letter was sent to the inspector general at the CIA, which worked to try to substantiate some of the allegations. But instead of sending the letter on to the lawmakers in Congress after two weeks, as required by law, Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, instead held it from lawmakers while he consulted with the White House and the Department of Justice about the allegations.

Democratic lawmakers argue Trump administration officials tried to keep the allegations from reaching Congress, violating the procedure for dealing with such issues.

Maguire told members of Congress Thursday he had acted lawfully in initially blocking the release of the complaint due to concerns about executive privilege, a legal right of the U.S. presidency to keep some conversations and documents private.

What do we know about the Trump-Zelenskiy phone call?

The White House released a summary of Trump’s phone call with Zelenskiy Wednesday. In a memo reconstructed from the work of White House note takers, Trump asks Zelenskiy to investigate business dealings of former Vice President Biden and his son, Hunter.

Trump also reminds the Ukrainian president that “the United States has been very very good to Ukraine.” Trump ordered a freeze on $400 million of congressionally-approved aid to Ukraine just a few days before that phone call. Trump said this week the order was part of an effort to combat corruption.

Congressional Democrats say the memo is clear evidence of the president proposing a so-called “quid pro quo,” an exchange of one favor for another. But the president’s allies on Capitol Hill said the memo completely exonerated him.

What will happen next in the U.S. Congress?

The House committees investigating the president’s actions will begin building a case that could lead to the drafting of articles of impeachment.

Articles are formal charges against the president that are voted on by the entire U.S. House of Representatives.

Impeachment is a two-step process. If the House votes on and passes the articles, the president is considered impeached and the case moves to the U.S. Senate for a process that is similar to a court trial. If a two-thirds super majority of the U.S. Senate votes to convict, the president is removed from office.

Only two U.S. presidents have been impeached by the U.S. House – Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998. The U.S. Senate has never voted to remove a president from office.

How soon can we expect a vote on impeachment?

Pelosi has cautioned that there should be a careful gathering of facts so that lawmakers do not rush to judgement. But many House Democrats want to see the vote on articles of impeachment before the end of the year. The 2020 presidential election gets fully underway with the Iowa caucuses in February. Many Democrats believe it would be politically risky to have an impeachment vote occurring at the same time.

As of Friday, 225 House Democrats and one independent member of the U.S. House of Representatives support impeachment or an impeachment inquiry. Until articles of impeachment are drafted, it is unknown how many members would vote in support of impeaching Trump.

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Seven Catalan separatists arrested on suspicion of planning violent attacks have been charged with belonging to a “terrorist organisation” and remanded in custody, Spanish judicial authorities said on Thursday.

The seven were among nine people detained on Monday on accusations they were planning attacks with possible explosives. The other two were released.

A judge in Madrid ruled that there was evidence suggesting the seven were members of an organization intending to achieve Catalan independence “by any means including violence,” a court statement said.

No details of the accused were given.

The seven suspects have also been charged with making and possessing explosives.

The arrests come just weeks before the second anniversary of the banned Catalan independence referendum which triggered one of Spain’s biggest political crises.

Several hundred people demonstrated outside the Catalan parliament in Barcelona and then the city’s police headquarters shouting “freedom for political prisoners.”

The parliament earlier Thursday approved a resolution calling for the “withdrawal from Catalan territory of the civil guard police,” described as a “type of political police.”

A verdict is due next month in the trial of 12 separatist leaders for their roles in the attempted secession in 2017.

Sentencing the separatist leaders could provoke strong protests in Spain’s northeastern region.

Alleged violence in 2017 was a key focus of the trial, in which the separatist leaders defended the peaceful nature of their movement.  

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An Iranian woman sentenced in the United States for violating sanctions against Tehran was released and has returned home, her lawyer told AFP Thursday, following her country’s unsuccessful attempt at a prisoner swap.

A judge in Minneapolis sentenced Negar Ghodskani to 27 months in prison Tuesday, but determined the time she had spent in custody in Australia and the United States was enough to fulfill her punishment.

Ghodskani “is now free in Iran with her family,” her lawyer Robert Richman said in an email.

Arrested in Australia

A legal resident of Australia, Ghodskani was arrested in Adelaide in 2017 after U.S. prosecutors said she sought U.S. digital communications technology by presenting herself as an employee of a Malaysian company.

U.S. prosecutors said she in fact was sending the technology to Iranian company Fanamoj, which works in public broadcasting.

After extradition to the United States, she confessed to participation in a conspiracy to illegally export technology to Iran in breach of sanctions, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

Pregnant at the time of her arrest, she gave birth while in Australian custody. Her son was sent to Iran to live with his father.

Prisoner swap offered

Her case was raised by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in April, who floated a potential prisoner swap for a British-Iranian mother being held in Tehran.

He suggested exchanging Ghodskani for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, in jail in Tehran for alleged sedition.

Both women have been separated from their young children while being detained.

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The United States is pressing other countries to join its proposed International Religious Freedom Alliance, in what diplomat Sam Brownback calls “the most significant” new human rights initiative in a generation.

“We’re going to call like-minded nations together and ask them to join this alliance and push on the issue of religious freedom and against religious persecution around the world,” Brownback, ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, said at a news briefing earlier this week. “We want to see the iron curtain on religious persecution come down.”

Brownback’s remarks came at a Monday press conference following the “Global Call to Protect Religious Freedom,” a U.S.-sponsored event on the opening day of the annual U.N. General Assembly. At the event, President Donald Trump pledged an additional $25 million to counter a trend of increasing religious intolerance around the globe.

The president’s chief envoy for that mission is Brownback. Since early 2018, the former Republican governor from the Midwestern state of Kansas has headed the office that he helped establish as a U.S. senator. He was a key sponsor of the 1998 Religious Freedom Act, as Religion News Service has pointed out. 

Brownback spoke with VOA after the news conference about what his brief entails — “fighting for religious freedom all around the world for all faiths all the time,” as well as for “people of no faith.”

“We’ll stand up and we’ll do something,” Brownback said of the Trump administration, saying it employs tools ranging from private diplomacy to public designations and “sanctions against countries that persecute people for their faith.”

For instance, the State Department in July publicly designated four Burmese military officials as responsible for “gross human rights violations,” including the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people, the Muslim minority group in Myanmar.

Government restrictions on religion have “increased markedly around the world,” according to the Pew Research Center, which began tracking the issue in 2007. The Washington-based center reported this summer that “52 countries, including some in very populous countries such as China, Indonesia and Russia, impose either ‘high’ or ‘very high’ levels of restrictions on religion, up from 40 in 2007.” It found increases in the number of states enacting restrictive laws and policies, as well as in religion-related hostilities and violence against individuals.

“Approximately 80% of the world’s population live in countries where religious liberty is threatened, restricted or even banned,” Trump said Monday, using a State Department figure extrapolated from Pew’s research.

Pew does not attempt to calculate the share of people around the world who are affected by such restrictions, a spokeswoman for the center told VOA.

Brownback told VOA that he sees religious freedom, enshrined in both the U.N. Charter and U.S. Constitution, as a harbinger of whether other rights are respected or not.

“When you’re willing to protect a person’s religious freedom, you generally are willing to protect the rest of their rights,” the diplomat said. “If you’re willing to persecute a person for their religious beliefs, you’re generally willing to persecute on a number of other rights.”

Brownback said the United Arab Emirates, while “certainly not perfect,” was a model of religious freedom. “They allow faiths to practice. They allow people to build” houses of worship. “And you have this robust, dynamic, growing economy and a lot of other things moving forward.”

He added that he’s “very hopeful” about Algeria and Sudan, African countries where “there are new governments coming in” to replace oppressive regimes.

The U.S. is supporting “better security at religious institutions, where we see a lot of them destroyed around the world, people killed at these houses of worship,” Brownback said at the press conference. He noted that he’s co-hosting a conference in Morocco next week on preserving religious heritage sites.

The Trump administration, which has strong support among evangelical Christians, has been criticized for favoring certain faith groups over others.

“President Trump was elected on the promise of a ‘complete and utter shutdown’ of Muslim immigration to the U.S.,” Rabbi Jack Moline, who leads the Interfaith Alliance, told USA Today. “Since then, his administration has worked tirelessly to redefine ‘religious freedom’ as a license to discriminate.”

The alliance promotes the separation of church and state.

The role of faith-based initiatives in U.S. foreign policy has risen during the last two decades under both Republican and Democratic administrations, according to scholar Lee Marsden, noting a strong interest in curbing radical Islam after the al-Qaida terrorist attacks in September 2001.

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It’s been a bad year for dengue fever, a painful, debilitating virus that is surging in the Philippines, Bangladesh, Vietnam and other nations.  There is no cure for dengue, which is spread by mosquitos. However, scientists are enlisting a bacteria in the fight against dengue because they think will make it harder for mosquitos to spread the often deadly dengue virus. VOA’s Jim Randle has our story.
 

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In an earlier time, boxes on wheels raced on American streets.  Now, an energy drink company sponsors motorless, homemade car races around the world.  VOA’s Arash Arabasadi takes us on this bumpy ride through Jordan.

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Faith Aweko of Uganda describes herself as a “waste-preneur.”  She has come up with an innovative way to transform discarded plastic bags into backpacks for everyday use.  Halima Athumani reports from the town of Mpigi. 
 

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A 23-year-old law student who accused a leader of India’s governing party of sexual assault was arrested Wednesday on charges of extortion, police said.

Naveen Arora, a police officer handling the case, said the woman is accused of demanding nearly $700,000 from the lawmaker, Chinmayanand, who uses one name, and “was arrested from her residence and will be produced before a court.”

In August, the student accused Chinmayanand, a Bharatiya Janata Party leader and president of the college where she studies, of sexual assault, harassment and intimidation. She first mentioned his alleged harassment in a video clip posted on social media last month.

His lawyer has denied the allegations.

Chinmayanand, who was was arrested on Sept. 20, has been shifted from a jail to a hospital in Lucknow, the capital of the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where he is being treated for cardiac problems.

The 72-year-old is a former minister from Uttar Pradesh and had previously faced charges in a rape case filed in 2011. Those charges were withdrawn in 2017.

The law student had said earlier that the case of extortion against her had been slapped to weaken her case against Chinmayanand.

The Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, has a checkered history of its leaders being accused of sexual assault. In August, lawmaker Kuldeep Singh Sengar was sacked from the party after being accused of raping a 17-year-old girl in 2017.

In January 2018, two BJP lawmakers attended protest rallies held by Hindu organizations defending the accused in the rape and murder of an 8-year-old inside a Hindu temple. It was only after a national uproar that the BJP made the two ministers resign.

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A Zimbabwean doctor desperate to leave the country for medical treatment after his recent abduction has been blocked after police approached the High Court asserting he is “unfit to travel.”

The head of the Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors Association, Dr. Peter Magombeyi, was freed last week after disappearing for several days. His alleged abduction after leading a pay strike led to days of protests by health workers and expressions of concern by diplomats and rights groups, who said more than 50 government critics and activists in Zimbabwe have been abducted this year alone.
 

Police stopped Magombeyi from leaving for treatment in neighboring South Africa on Tuesday even after a judge ruled he could travel outside Zimbabwe as he is not under arrest. He has been recuperating in a local hospital, and lawyers have said preliminary medical assessments show possible physical harm and psychological trauma.
 
Magombeyi’s lawyers now say police are violating the court order, and they worry his condition will deteriorate as the drama plays out. The doctor must stay in Zimbabwe until the police application to the court is resolved.
 
Police dismissed accusations that they are preventing the doctor from traveling, saying they are providing him with protection “for his own personal safety.”
 
In the court application filed Tuesday night, police said Magombeyi should remain at the hospital until he is fit to travel, adding that they also want to sort out his security while in South Africa.
 
Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, a non-governmental group helping the doctor, described the police assertions as “shocking.”

The government has bristled at the accusations of abductions, with President Emmerson Mnangagwa and other officials over the weekend warning against so-called “false” abductions they assert are meant to make the government look bad. Mnangagwa is attending the United Nations annual gathering of world leaders this week.
 
Zimbabwe’s health sector, like its economy, is in crisis. Many services are unavailable due to collapsed infrastructure, lack of medicines or unavailability of doctors and nurses who say they can no longer afford transport to return to work.
 

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Due to climate change, the world’s oceans are getting warmer, rising higher, losing oxygen and becoming more acidic at an ever-faster pace and melting even more ice and snow, a grim international science assessment concludes.

But that’s nothing compared to what Wednesday’s special United Nations-affiliated oceans and ice report says is coming if global warming doesn’t slow down: three feet of sea rise by the end of the century, many fewer fish, weakening ocean currents, even less snow and ice, stronger and wetter hurricanes and nastier El Nino weather systems.

“The oceans and the icy parts of the world are in big trouble and that means we’re all in big trouble too,” said one of the report’s lead authors, Michael Oppenheimer, professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University. “The changes are accelerating.”

Protesters in Washington Disrupt Morning Commute to Press for Climate Action

These changes will not just hurt the 71% of the world covered by the oceans or the 10% covered in ice and snow, but it will harm people, plants, animals, food, societies, infrastructure and the global economy, according to the special report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The oceans absorb more than 90% of the excess heat from carbon pollution in the air, as well as much of the carbon dioxide itself. The seas warm more slowly than the air but trap the heat longer with bigger side effects — and the report links these waters with Earth’s snow and ice, called the cryosphere, because their futures are interconnected.

“The world’s oceans and cryosphere have been taking the heat for climate change for decades. The consequences for nature and humanity are sweeping and severe,” said Ko Barrett, vice chair of the IPCC and a deputy assistant administrator for research at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Climate Change Campaign Continues Despite Criticism

The report found:

—Seas are now rising at one-seventh of an inch (3.66 millimeters) a year, which is 2.5 times faster than the rate from 1900 to 1990.

—The world’s oceans have already lost 1% to 3% of the oxygen in their upper levels since 1970 and will lose more as warming continues.

—From 2006 to 2015, the ice melting from Greenland, Antarctica and the world’s mountain glaciers has accelerated and is now losing 720 billion tons (653 billion metric tons) of ice a year.

—Arctic June snow cover has shrunk more than half since 1967, down nearly 1 million square miles (2.5 million square kilometers).

—Arctic sea ice in September, the annual minimum, is down almost 13% per decade since 1979. This year’s low, reported Monday, tied for the second-lowest on record. If carbon pollution continues unabated, by the end of the century there will be a 10% to 35% chance each year that sea ice will disappear in the Arctic in September.

—Marine animals are likely to decrease 15%, and catches by fisheries in general are expected to decline 21% to 24% by the end of century because of climate change.

And for the first time, the international team of scientists is projecting that “some island nations are likely to become uninhabitable due to climate-related ocean and cryosphere change.”

“Climate change is already irreversible,” French climate scientist Valérie Masson-Delmotte, a report lead author, said in a Wednesday news conference in Monaco. “Due to the heat uptake in the ocean, we can’t go back. ”

UN Meets as Climate Change Action is Supported, Questioned

But many of the worst-case projections in the report can still be avoided depending on how the world handles the emissions of heat-trapping gases, the report’s authors said.

The IPCC increased its projected end-of-century sea level rise in the worst-case scenario by nearly four inches (10 centimeters) from its 2013 projections because of the increased recent melting of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.

The new report projects that, under the business-as-usual scenario for carbon emissions, seas by the end of the century will rise between two feet (61 centimeters) and 43 inches (110 centimeters) with a most likely amount of 33 inches (84 centimeters). This is slightly less than the traditional 1 meter (39 inches) that scientists often use.

“Sea level continues to rise at an increasing rate,” the report said. “Extreme sea level events that are historically rare (once per century in the recent past) are projected to occur frequently (at least once per year) at many locations by 2050.”

And sea level will rise two to three times as much over the centuries to come if warming continues, so the world is looking at a “future that certainly looks completely different than what we currently have,” said report co-author Hans-Otto Portner, a German climate scientist.

The Nobel Prize-winning IPCC requires nations meeting this week in Monaco to unanimously approve the report, and because of that the group’s reports tend to show less sea level rise and smaller harms than other scientific studies, outside experts said.

“Like many of the past reports, this one is conservative in the projections, especially in how much ice can be lost in Greenland and Antarctica,” said NASA oceanographer Josh Willis, who studies Greenland ice melt and wasn’t part of the report. “We’re not done revising our sea level rise projections and we won’t be for a while.”

Willis said people should be prepared for a rise in sea levels to be twice these IPCC projections.

The oceans have become slightly more acidic, but that will accelerate with warming. In the worst case scenario, the world is looking at a “95% increase in total acidity of the oceans,” said study co-author Nathan Bindoff of the University of Tasmania.

UN Plans Vast Urban Forests to Fight Climate Change

UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says pace of urbanization in Africa and Asia contributing to climate change and planting trees could improve air quality, cut risk of floods and heatwaves and halt land degradation

Even if warming is limited to just another couple of tenths of a degree, the world’s warm water coral reefs will go extinct in some places and be dramatically different in others, the report said.

“We are already seeing the demise of the warm water coral reefs,” Portner said. “That is one of the strongest warning signals that we have available.”

The report gives projections based on different scenarios for emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide. One is a world that dramatically decreases carbon pollution — and the worst case is where little has been done. We are closer to the worst-case situation, scientists said.

Outside scientists praised the work but were disturbed by it.

“It is alarming to read such a thorough cataloging of all of the serious changes in the planet that we’re driving,” said Texas A&M University climate scientist Andrew Dessler, who wasn’t part of the report. “What’s particularly disturbing as a scientist is that virtually all of these changes were predicted years or decades ago.”

The report’s authors emphasized that it doesn’t doom Earth to this gloomy outlook.

“We indicate we have a choice. Whether we go into a grim future depends on the decisions that are being made,” Portner said. “We have a better future ahead of us once we make the right choice.”

“These far-reaching consequences can only be brought under control by acute emissions reductions,” Portner said.

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VOA Ukrainian service reporter Myroslava Gongadze contributed to this report

Democratic lawmakers are considering formally launching an impeachment investigation into President Donald Trump Tuesday, following news reports that he froze Congressionally-approved funding for Ukraine while pushing the country to investigate one of his political rivals.

Facing mounting pressure, the president pledged Wednesday to release the “complete, fully declassified and unredacted” transcript of his phone call with Ukraine’s leader that is at the center of a debate between Congress and the White House over a whistleblower complaint.

News reports had said Trump pressured Ukraine’s president to investigate leading Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who served for years on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.

“You will see it was a very friendly and totally appropriate call. No pressure and, unlike (former Vice President) Joe Biden and his son, NO quid pro quo! This is nothing more than a continuation of the Greatest and most Destructive Witch Hunt of all time!,” Trump said on Twitter Tuesday.

VOA’s Ukrainian Service spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky before his meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday at the United Nations General Assembly where he said, “We want the U.S. to always support Ukraine.”#UNGAhttps://t.co/aYiYjxY1H0pic.twitter.com/pLs6S3QBXX

— The Voice of America (@VOANews) September 24, 2019

Earlier he confirmed he had told his staff to withhold about $400 million in aid to Ukraine days before a phone call with the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

“As far as withholding funds, those funds were paid,” Trump said. “But my complaint has always been, and I’d withhold again and I’ll continue to withhold until such time as Europe and other nations contribute to Ukraine.”   

Trump has insisted he did nothing wrong during the phone call but also acknowledged, “there was pressure put on with respect to Joe Biden. What Joe Biden did for his son, that’s something they should be looking at.”

Biden to call on Congress to impeach Trump
 

Shortly after Trump spoke Tuesday, Biden’s campaign said the former vice president planned to call on Congress to begin impeachment proceedings against Trump if his administration does not begin fully cooperating with ongoing congressional investigations and subpoenas.

Democratic Congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis also endorsed impeachment proceedings against Trump, telling colleagues on the House floor Tuesday he has been “patient while we have tried every other path” and warning “the future of our democracy is at stake.”

The leaders of three House of Representatives committees have demanded Secretary of State Mike Pompeo turn over all documents related to the call Trump made to Zelenskiy.  

The Democratic chairmen of the House Foreign Affairs, Intelligence, and Oversight committees — Elliot Engel, Adam Schiff, and Elijah Cummings — set a Thursday deadline, the same day the intelligence committee is set to hear testimony from acting director national intelligence Joseph Maguire about the whistleblower complaint linked to the call.

Zelenskiy and Trump are scheduled to meet Wednesday on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.  Zelenskiy told VOA’s Ukrainian service Tuesday “we expect support from the U.S.” and “We just want the U.S. to always support Ukraine and Ukraine’s course in its fight against aggression and war.” Zelensky added “I think the meeting will be very warm.”

Sen. Chris Murphy told reporters Monday that he met several weeks ago with Zelenskiy, and that the Ukranian administration worried the aid cutoff “was a consequence for their unwillingness, at the time, to investigate the Bidens.”

“They were unwilling to conduct this investigation because there was no merit to it,” Murphy said.

‘Impeachable offense’

Also Monday, a group of first-term Democratic members of the House of Representatives with backgrounds in national security wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post saying if the allegations of Trump’s actions are true, the lawmakers believe they “represent an impeachable offense.”

The group includes Reps. Gil Cisneros, Jason Crow, Chrissy Houlahan, Elaine Luria, Mikie Sherrill, Elissa Slotkin and Abigail Spanberger.

Trump on Monday dismissed the Democratic drumbeat for impeachment, saying he does not take such threats “at all seriously.” He insisted his call with Zelenskiy was a “very nice call,” congratulating him on becoming Ukrainian president.

Trump said he could very easily release a transcript of the call, and the press would be disappointed. But he refused to commit to doing so, saying it would be a bad precedent.

Whistleblower

The controversy began last week when reports emerged that an unidentified whistleblower in the national intelligence community became alarmed about a series of actions inside the Trump administration. They include what is now known to be Trump’s telephone call with Zelenskiy.

This person contacted the intelligence inspector general, who called the complaint “serious” and “urgent.”

Maguire has refused to turn over the inspector’s report to Congress, which the law requires him to do.

As vice president under Barack Obama, Joe Biden went to Ukraine in 2016 and threatened to withhold billions of dollars in U.S. loan guarantees unless the government cracked down on corruption. Biden also demanded that Ukraine’s chief prosecutor Viktor Shokin be fired.

Shokin had previously investigated the gas company on which Hunter Biden served on the board. But the probe had been inactive for a year before Joe Biden’s visit. Hunter Biden has said he was not the target of any investigation and no evidence of any wrongdoing by the Bidens has surfaced.

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