Lawmakers were outraged after seeing a White House readout of Trump's call, in which he urged the Ukrainian president to investigate Joe Biden.
House Democrats are coalescing around a strategy to narrow the focus of their impeachment inquiry to President Donald Trump's interactions with the president of Ukraine, an issue that has unified the party in outrage and motivated some Democrats to seek expedited action.
“This has clarity and understanding in the eyes of the American people,” Pelosi told her leadership team, according to a source with knowledge of the meeting. “If we do articles, then we can include other things.” “Obviously, we are more able to speak with one voice on that subject than on some of the others,” Kildee said of the House’s slew of ongoing investigations. “It’s not like the others go away, but I think this is clearly going to be the issue that’s going to drive the bus.”
The memo confirmed Democrats’ strongest suspicions — that Trump pushed top Ukrainian officials to investigate his political rival while hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid was being held up. Trump also offered Zelensky Justice Department help in that investigation and emphasized his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, was acting as his emissary on the matter.
“I am not concerned whether it is a quid pro quo or not,” Schiff added. “Ukraine understood what this president wanted. He made it abundantly clear. He made it redundantly clear. He had his emissaries making it clear. And Ukraine knew what it needed to do if it wanted to get military assistance: and that is, help the president of the United States violate his oath of office.”
“The release of the memo is devastating for the president’s defenders," said Rep. Jamie Raskin , a longtime impeachment advocate who sits on the Judiciary Committee. “I found the allegations deeply disturbing. I also found them very credible,” Schiff told reporters after reading the whistleblower complaint, which remains classified. “It is an urgent matter. And there was simply no basis to keep this from the committee. The idea that DOJ would have intervened to prevent it from getting to Congress throws the leadership of that department further into ill repute.
Even without the complete substance of Trump’s call, more than 200 members of the Democratic Caucus — nearly enough to form a majority of the House — had embraced impeachment proceedings as of late Tuesday, citing Trump’s refusal to provide the whistleblower complaint related to the phone call.
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