House launches Trump impeachment inquiry

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi released a statement regarding the White House transcript, saying it “confirms that the President engaged in behavior that undermines the integrity of our elections,” and that this combined with the “Justice Department’s acting in a rogue fashion in being complicit in the President’s lawlessness confirm the need for an impeachment inquiry.”

"The President has tried to make lawlessness a virtue in America and now is exporting it abroad," she said.

Read her full statement:

Both the Director of National Intelligence and the Intelligence Community Inspector General referred the whistleblowers' complaint to the Justice Department in late August.

Those notifications kicked off the Justice Department's analysis of whether there was a possible violation of a campaign finance criminal statute. The inspector general also referred the matter to the FBI for criminal investigation separately.

Notably, the DNI contacted Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) for guidance. It was that office that determined the complaint could be looked at as a possible criminal matter.

So what was Barr’s role and who made the decision there was no criminal violation? Barr had “minimal involvement” in the Justice Department’s handling of the referral, an official briefed on the matter said.

The criminal division, led by Brian Benczkowski, and the office of Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen primarily dealt with the legal analysis under criminal law — though the final decision also involved the heads of the National Security Division and the Office of Legal Counsel. The career prosecutors from the public integrity section and other lawyers worked on the assessment that arrived at the final decision that there was no criminal violation. 

"All relevant components of the Department agreed with this legal conclusion," Justice Department spokesperson Kerri Kupec said.

Here's a timeline of events, according to senior DOJ officials:

Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said the rough transcript of President Trump's phone call with the Ukrainian president was "far more damning" than he expected.

What the rough transcript says: President Trump repeatedly pushed for the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky  to reopen an investigation of his potential 2020 rival, former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, and asked the Ukrainian leader to work with Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr on the issue, according to a transcript of the July call.

The intelligence community inspector general last week suggested that the controversial whistleblower complaint that triggered the Ukraine-Trump drama, raised concerns about multiple actions, sources told CNN.

However, the inspector general — who spoke at a closed-door briefing last week — would not say if those instances involved President Trump, the sources said.

One source said that Inspector General Michael Atkinson referenced "a sequence of events" and "alleged actions" that took place. However, another source disputed that the IG provided substantive details regarding the whistleblower claim. 

Remember: We still haven't seen the whistleblower's complaint. Yesterday, the Senate unanimously approved a resolution urging the Trump administration to provide the full whistleblower compliant to Congress.

What we do know about the complaint: The Trump-Ukraine drama was first triggered by a whistleblower, who filed a complaint about Trump's contact with a foreign leader. After that, allegations surfaced that Trump threatened to withhold $400 million in military and security aid from Ukraine to force Kiev to open an investigation into his potential 2020 rival Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.

There is no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden or his son.

Speaking at The Atlantic Festival this morning, GOP Sen. Mitt Romney said he found the details revealed from the President's call with the Ukrainian president to be "deeply troubling."

Romney is one of the few Republicans in Congress who has spoken about the need to investigate Trump.

On whether he perceived a "quid pro quo" between Trump and President Zelensky, Romeny said he's not "focused so much on the quid pro quo element."

"I said this in my first reaction, which is if the president of the United States asks or presses the leader of a foreign country to carry out an investigation of a political nature that's troubling. And I feel that," Romney said.

Asked if this could rise to an impeachable offense, Romney said, "I'm going to leave it what I've said and let the process gather the facts that will ultimately come out."

Presidential candidiate Bernie Sanders just tweeted a strong condemnation of the President:

President Trump's 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale called the Ukraine drama and the impeachment inquiry "another hoax from Democrats and the media."

"The facts prove the President did nothing wrong," he said in a statement. "The fact is that the President wants to fight the corruption in Washington, where the Bidens, the Clintons, and other career politicians have abused their power for personal gain."

Reminder: There is no evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden or his son, Hunter.

The Trump campaign also sent out a fundraising email with the subject line "total smear job." The body of the email leads with news that the Democrats have launched an impeachment inquiry and asked people to contribute to the "Official Impeachment Defense Task Force."

On a call with outside allies this morning, White House officials encouraged surrogates to stress that there was no quid pro quo on Trump's call with the Ukrainian president.

They're also encouraged to stress that President Trump decided to release the transcript to combat “disinformation.”

The White House urged allies to argue that the President’s conversations with foreign leaders are not themselves intelligence activities and therefore not under the jurisdiction of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Nonetheless, White House officials on the call also pushed allies to argue that the whistleblower complaint has been handled “by the book.”

The White House surrogates call did not involve much in the way of a broader argument against impeachment, however. Rather, White House officials focused on specific rebuttals to the limited issue of the Ukraine phone call.

A senior White House official clarified how the transcript was crafted: