US House of Representatives

On July 25th, 2019, President Donald Trump spoke on the phone with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky. In that call President Trump asked President Zelensky to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden, and to look into CrowdStrike (a cybersecurity firm that the Democratic National Committee hired to investigate the hacking of their server during the 2016 election), while seeming to imply that the delivery of the $400 million in military aid approved by Congress was contingent upon these investigations. 

The contents of the conversation concerned President Trump’s staff so much that they placed the transcript of the call on a Top Secret server in order to reduce the number of people who would have access to its contents. Even so, a whistleblower reported the call, notifying the Inspector General for the Director of National Intelligence of the contents of the call. The Inspector General determined that the call was an “urgent concern,” which is defined as a serious or flagrant problem, abuse, or violation of the law. By law, the Inspector General had seven days to report the incident to Congress. Following procedure, the Inspector General sent the information to the acting Director of National Intelligence, who decided not to forward it to Congress. 

Word of the report leaked out to the House, who demanded to see the report. The report was delivered to the House, and a brief summary/transcript of the call was made available to the public. As a result of the contents of the report and the call, the House immediately started an impeachment inquiry. This official report details the findings of the inquiry. Now you can read it for yourself and decide whether the events chronicled herein merit impeachment.