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Congressman: “Sir, let me repeat my question:
Did you ever speak to the president
about this complaint?”
Congress is investigating allegations
that President Trump pushed a foreign government
to dig up dirt on his Democratic rivals.
“It's just a Democrat witch hunt.
Here we go again.”
At the heart of an impeachment inquiry
is a nine-page whistle-blower complaint
that names over two dozen people.
Not counting the president himself,
these are the people that appear
the most:
First, Trump's personal lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani.
According to documents and interviews,
Giuliani has been involved in shadowy diplomacy
on behalf of the president's interests.
He encouraged Ukrainian officials
to investigate the Biden family's activities
in the country, plus other avenues that
could benefit Trump like whether the Ukrainians
intentionally helped the Democrats during
the 2016 election.
It was an agenda he also pushed on TV.
“So you did ask Ukraine to look into Joe Biden.”
“Of course I did!”
A person Giuliani worked with, Yuriy Lutsenko,
Ukraine's former prosecutor general.
He pushed for investigations that would also
benefit Giuliani and Trump.
Lutsenko also discussed conspiracy theories
about the Bidens in the U.S. media.
But he later walked back his allegations,
saying there was no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens.
This is where Hunter Biden comes in,
the former vice president's son.
He served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company
run by this guy, who's had some issues with the law.
While Biden was in office, he along with others,
called for the dismissal of Lutsenko's predecessor,
a prosecutor named Viktor Shokin,
whose office was overseeing investigations
into the company that Hunter Biden was involved with.
Shokin was later voted out by the Ukrainian government.
Lutsenko replaced him, but was widely criticized
for corruption himself.
When a new president took office
in May, Volodymyr Zelensky,
Zelensky said that he'd replace Lutsenko.
Giuliani and Trump?
Not happy.
They viewed Lutsenko as their ally.
During a July 25 call between Trump
and the new Ukrainian president,
Trump defended him, saying, “I heard
you had a prosecutor who is very good
and he was shut down
and that's really unfair.”
In that phone call, Trump also allegedly asked
his counterpart to continue the investigation
into Joe Biden, who is his main rival in the 2020 election.
Zelensky has publicly denied feeling pressured by Trump.
“In other words, no pressure.”
And then finally, Attorney General William Barr,
who also came up in the July 25 call.
In the reconstructed transcript,
Trump repeatedly suggested that Zelensky's
administration could work with Barr and Giuliani
to investigate the Bidens and other matters
of political interest to Trump.
Since the whistle-blower complaint was made public,
Democrats have criticized Barr for dismissing allegations
that Trump had violated
campaign finance laws during his call with Zelensky
and not passing along the complaint to Congress.
House Democrats have now subpoenaed several people
mentioned in the complaint, as an impeachment inquiry
into the president's conduct continues.