Friday didn’t feature a congressional hearing like Thursday’s grilling of acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, but that doesn’t mean the day was short on impeachment news.
To recap, the Trump scandal at hand, out of all the possible Trump scandals, is that he used a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to press for Ukrainian officials to dig up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden (dirt that likely doesn't exist). A “transcript”—though partial and edited by the Trump White House—shows Trump doing exactly that. A whistleblower complaint expands on that, saying that White House officials knew how inappropriate Trump’s behavior on the call was and hid the transcript in a server dedicated to highly classified material. And it might not be the first time they’ve used that server to hide things that would be problematic for Trump.
That’s the backdrop. Now we need to know what else is out there, how Democrats will move forward with an impeachment inquiry, and whether Republicans will continue standing by their man. Here’s some of what happened today:
● Two different polls find public support for impeachment growing rapidly after this news broke. Morning Consult/Politico had asked about impeachment just last weekend, but saw support jump by 7 points. Hopefully such polls will embolden Democrats and give Republicans something to think about.
● Democrats are debating how fast to move with an impeachment inquiry and how narrowly to target it to the Ukraine phone call. House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff says his committee will work through recess doing witness interviews, scheduling hearings, and digging for information.
● Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has already been subpoenaed by three committees to appear at impeachment inquiry-related hearings.
● The White House admitted to putting the call transcript on the hidden server as described in the whistleblower complaint, but tried to downplay it as no big deal. That’s not what intelligence experts are saying about any of this.
● Republicans, meanwhile, are dodging as if their lives depended on it. (And for some, their political lives just might.) A favorite dodge, after claiming not to have read the seven-page whistleblower complaint, is to dismiss it as “secondhand evidence,” but as Mark Sumner points out, that’s just an invitation to investigate further. For his part, Donald Trump is predictably melting down on Twitter.
● It’s also harder for Republicans to dismiss the whistleblower complaint when its admittedly secondhand report of the Ukraine phone call lines up with the “transcript” the White House released. So why would the White House release such a damning document? Well, some of Trump’s top advisers told him not to. But that's not who he listened to. He listened to a crew that apparently thought releasing a document showing Trump using the presidency to pressure a foreign leader to turn over information helping him win in 2020 would go over well with the public.