On December 18, 2019, by a majority vote, the House of Representatives impeached President Trump for abusing power by soliciting Ukrainian interference in the 2020 presidential election and then obstructing the House's impeachment investigation. The allegations against Trump rested substantially on a phone conversation between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25, 2019. During this conversation, Trump asked Zelensky to investigate the prior conduct of Joe Biden—Trump's likely political opponent for the 2020 presidential election. While the House was conducting its impeachment investigation, the White House directed executive branch officials not to testify or to turn over documents. Less than two months after the impeachment, on February 5, 2020, the Senate voted to acquit Trump of the charges, with a majority of Senators voting in favor of acquittal.
The U.S. Constitution provides that the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”Footnote 1 If the House of Representatives approves articles of impeachment against the president by a majority vote, then the matter moves to the Senate for trial.Footnote 2 A two-thirds vote in the Senate is required for conviction.Footnote 3 Trump is the third president to be impeached, after Andrew Johnson in 1868Footnote 4 and Bill Clinton in 1998,Footnote 5 and the first president to be impeached for conduct related to foreign affairs.Footnote 6
According to the House Intelligence Committee's impeachment report (the “Impeachment Report”), Trump and his agents solicited the Ukrainian government to announce investigations that would benefit Trump politically.Footnote 7 The Impeachment Report determined that, over the spring and summer of 2019, Trump and his agents sought an investigation into unsubstantiated allegations that, as President Obama's vice president, Biden had interfered with Ukraine's investigation into corruption at Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, because his son served on Burisma's board of directors.Footnote 8 The announcement of such an investigation could damage Biden's 2020 election campaign.Footnote 9 Trump also sought an investigation into the discredited theory that Ukraine—not Russia—hacked the Democratic National Committee's server in 2016.Footnote 10 Shifting the blame from Russia to Ukraine would detract from allegations that Trump worked with Russia to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election.Footnote 11
Drawing on witness testimony, the Impeachment Report described a series of events, most of which came after Zelensky's election as president of Ukraine in April of 2019. Following this election, Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, sought to secure an announcement of the sought-after investigations from the new Ukrainian administration.Footnote 12 The U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, was perceived as an obstacle to these efforts, and Trump recalled her shortly after Zelensky's election.Footnote 13 Her successor, William Taylor, later testified that Giuliani and Trump political appointees conducted a channel of communication with Ukraine that operated outside of the U.S. State Department and that “the irregular policy channel was running contrary to the goals of longstanding U.S. policy.”Footnote 14
The Impeachment Report determined that, before the July 25 phone call between Trump and Zelensky, Trump's representatives communicated to Ukrainian officials that a meeting between the two leaders was conditioned on Zelensky announcing the investigations.Footnote 15 Such a meeting was particularly important for Ukraine because “Russia was watching closely to gauge the level of American support for the Ukrainian government.”Footnote 16 At one meeting between U.S. and Ukrainian officials, the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, explained that Trump would meet with Zelensky only after Ukraine announced investigations into “the energy sector” and specified in a follow-up conversation that he was referring to Burisma.Footnote 17 Also in the weeks before the phone call, Trump ordered a hold on $391 million that Congress had appropriated to Ukraine for security assistance.Footnote 18 The aid was withheld until September 11, 2019.Footnote 19 Taylor testified to his “astonishment” in learning that the aid was being withheld, as “one of the key pillars of our strong support for Ukraine was threatened.”Footnote 20
On July 25, Trump and Zelensky spoke by phone. The White House eventually released a rough transcript of the call.Footnote 21 After initial greetings, the two leaders discussed U.S. support for Ukraine:
Trump: [T]he United States has been very very good to Ukraine. I wouldn't say that it's reciprocal necessarily because things are happening that are not good but the United States has been very very good to Ukraine.
Zelensky: … I would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense. We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps specifically we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes.Footnote 22
Immediately afterward, Trump asked Zelensky for a “favor”—that Zelensky investigate Trump's theory that Ukraine was responsible for interfering in the 2016 election:
I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike … . I guess you have one of your wealthy people … . The server, they say Ukraine has it … . I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it.Footnote 23
After Zelensky agreed, Trump asked Zelensky to work with the U.S. attorney general to investigate the Bidens:
The other thing, [t]here's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it … . It sounds horrible to me.Footnote 24
In the weeks and months that followed, U.S. and Ukrainian officials followed up about the investigations discussed during the phone call.Footnote 25 The Impeachment Report concluded that Sondland told Ukrainian officials that both the White House meeting and U.S. security assistance were conditioned on Ukraine publicly announcing that it would pursue the investigations.Footnote 26 Taylor expressed concern multiple times, at one point texting Sondland that “it's crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.”Footnote 27
On August 12, 2019, a CIA officer filed a whistleblower complaint with the inspector general of the intelligence community about the July 25 phone call.Footnote 28 On September 24, after the allegations in the whistleblower complaint had come to light, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi initiated an impeachment inquiry.Footnote 29 House leaders maintained that Trump's request to Ukraine to conduct the investigations was a “shocking abuse of the Office of the Presidency,” whether or not there was a direct “quid pro quo”:
Let's be clear: no quid pro quo is required to betray our country. Trump asked a foreign government to interfere in our elections—that is betrayal enough. The corruption exists whether or not Trump threatened—explicitly or implicitly—that a lack of cooperation could result in withholding military aid.Footnote 30
The House Intelligence, Oversight, and Foreign Affairs Committees immediately began scheduling depositions of officials from the White House, State Department, Defense Department, National Security Council, and Office of Management and Budget.Footnote 31 The Trump administration, however, refused to cooperate with the House investigation, generally declining to produce documents and instructing executive branch employees not to provide testimony.Footnote 32 The Impeachment Report later described this noncooperation as “unprecedented,” observing that “past Presidents who were the subject of impeachment inquiries—including Presidents Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton—recognized and, to varying degrees, complied with information requests and subpoenas.”Footnote 33 The House committees ultimately issued subpoenas to compel certain administration officials to give depositions. Faced with conflicting demands from the legislative and executive branch, some witnesses—many of them civil servants—gave depositions, while other officials did not appear.Footnote 34 Pelosi stated that “[t]he White House should be warned that continued efforts to hide the truth of the President's abuse of power from the American people will be regarded as further evidence of obstruction.”Footnote 35
After conducting closed-door depositions, the House passed a resolution on October 31, 2019, directing the continuation of the impeachment proceedings and outlining the rest of the impeachment process.Footnote 36 The resolution provided that Democrats and Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee would question witnesses in open hearings, the Intelligence Committee would write a report summarizing its findings, and the Judiciary Committee would decide whether to report forward any articles of impeachment.Footnote 37 The chair of the Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, announced on the first day of the open hearings that many of the witnesses were appearing under subpoenas to protect them from retribution from the Trump administration.Footnote 38 He said that directing witnesses not to appear could itself be grounds for impeachment:
The president has instructed the State Department and other agencies to ignore congressional subpoenas for documents. He has instructed witnesses to defy subpoenas and refuse to appear. And he has suggested that those who do expose wrongdoing should be treated like traitors and spies. These actions will force Congress to consider, as it did with President Nixon, whether Trump's obstruction of the constitutional duties of Congress constitute additional grounds for impeachment.Footnote 39
Multiple witnesses who previously gave closed-door depositions testified publicly, including Yovanovitch, Taylor, and Sondland.Footnote 40 As during the earlier depositions, various witnesses testified that Trump asked Zelensky to announce investigations into Joe Biden and into whether Ukraine engaged in U.S. election interference in 2016; that Trump conditioned official acts on this announcement; and that these actions were improper and dangerous to U.S. national security.Footnote 41 While most witnesses were called by the Democrats on the Intelligence Committee, the Republican minority called several witnesses. These included a former official who testified that he had “made no judgment about any illegal conduct occurring” as he had listened to the July 25 callFootnote 42 and a former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine who testified that he “drew a sharp distinction” between seeking an investigation of Burisma and seeking an investigation of the Bidens.Footnote 43
Following the public testimony, the Intelligence Committee published the Impeachment Report, which contained its findings. The Report stated:
The impeachment inquiry into Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States, uncovered a months-long effort by President Trump to use the powers of his office to solicit foreign interference on his behalf in the 2020 election. … President Trump's scheme subverted U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine and undermined our national security in favor of two politically motivated investigations that would help his presidential reelection campaign. The President demanded that the newly-elected Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, publicly announce investigations into a political rival that he apparently feared the most, former Vice President Joe Biden, and into a discredited theory that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 presidential election. To compel the Ukrainian President to do his political bidding, President Trump conditioned two official acts on the public announcement of the investigations: a coveted White House visit and critical U.S. military assistance Ukraine needed to fight its Russian adversary.Footnote 44
The Intelligence Committee approved the Impeachment Report on December 3, 2019, in a party-line vote, with thirteen Democrats endorsing the report and nine Republicans dissenting.Footnote 45 The report was sent to the Judiciary Committee, which had been charged with deciding whether to draw up articles of impeachment.Footnote 46
House Republicans prepared their own report on the impeachment proceedings, reaching very different conclusions than those outlined in the Impeachment Report:
At the heart of the matter, the impeachment inquiry involves the actions of only two people: President Trump and President Zelensky. The summary of their July 25, 2019, telephone conversation shows no quid pro quo or indication of conditionality, threats, or pressure—much less evidence of bribery or extortion. …
Even examining evidence beyond the presidential phone call shows no quid pro quo, bribery, extortion, or abuse of power. The evidence shows that President Trump holds a deep-seated, genuine, and reasonable skepticism of Ukraine due to its history of pervasive corruption. The President has also been vocal about his skepticism of U.S. foreign aid and the need for European allies to shoulder more of the financial burden for regional defense. …
Understood in this proper context, the President's initial hesitation to meet with President Zelensky or to provide U.S. taxpayer-funded security assistance to Ukraine without thoughtful review is entirely prudent. …
There is also nothing wrong with asking serious questions about the presence of Vice President Biden's son, Hunter Biden, on the board of directors of Burisma, a corrupt Ukrainian company, or about Ukraine's attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election. …Footnote 47
On December 13, 2019, the Judiciary Committee voted 23 to 17 along party lines to adopt two articles of impeachment against Trump: the first for abuse of power, and the second for obstruction of justice.Footnote 48 The abuse of power charge stated in part that:
Using the powers of his high office, President Trump solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, in the 2020 United States Presidential election. He did so through a scheme or course of conduct that included soliciting the Government of Ukraine to publicly announce investigations that would benefit his reelection, harm the election prospects of a political opponent, and influence the 2020 United States Presidential election to his advantage. President Trump also sought to pressure the Government of Ukraine to take these steps by conditioning official United States Government acts of significant value to Ukraine on its public announcement of these investigations. … …
In all of this, President Trump abused the powers of the Presidency by ignoring and injuring national security and other vital national interests to obtain an improper personal political benefit. He has also betrayed the Nation by abusing his high office to enlist a foreign power in corrupting democratic elections.Footnote 49
The obstruction of justice charge stated in part:
[W]ithout lawful cause or excuse, President Trump directed Executive Branch agencies, offices, and officials not to comply with [congressional] subpoenas.
…
In the history of the Republic, no President has ever ordered the complete defiance of an impeachment inquiry or sought to obstruct and impede so comprehensively the ability of the House of Representatives to investigate “high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” This abuse of office served to cover up the President's own repeated misconduct. …Footnote 50
On December 18, the House impeached Trump, voting in favor of both articles of impeachment almost entirely along party lines.Footnote 51 229 Democrats and one Independent voted to impeach Trump for abuse of power, while two Democrats and 195 Republicans voted against this first article of impeachment.Footnote 52 228 Democrats and one Independent voted to impeach Trump for obstruction of justice, while three Democrats and 195 Republicans voted against this second article of impeachment.Footnote 53
On January 15, 2020, the seven representatives appointed as House impeachment managers delivered the articles of impeachment to the Senate, where the impeachment trial was to be presided over by Chief Justice John Roberts of the U.S. Supreme Court.Footnote 54 The Senate impeachment proceedings began with a debate over the trial rules.Footnote 55 The final rules provided, in essence, that (1) the entire House impeachment record would be admitted into evidence; (2) the House managers and the president's representatives would each have three days to make opening arguments; (3) senators would have sixteen hours to question the two sides, after which each side would receive two further hours for argument; (4) the Senate would then vote on whether to subpoena witnesses and documents and, if it voted in favor, would hear this additional evidence; and (5) finally, the Senate would vote on the articles of impeachment.Footnote 56 The Senate voted 53 to 47 along party lines to reject multiple amendments to the rules which would have allowed documents to be subpoenaed and witnesses to be called.Footnote 57
The House impeachment managers laid out the case for conviction over three days, drawing on the fact-finding previously conducted in the House proceedings. The lawyers for Trump advanced various arguments against impeachment.Footnote 58 With respect to the abuse of power charge, they argued, among other things, that:
First, the transcript [of the July 25 call] shows that the President did not condition either security assistance or a meeting on anything. The paused security assistance funds aren't even mentioned on the call.
Second, President Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials have repeatedly said that there was no quid pro quo and no pressure on them to review anything.
Third, President Zelensky and high-ranking Ukrainian officials did not even know—did not even know—that the security assistance was paused until the end of August, over a month after the July 25 call.
Fourth, not a single witness testified that the President himself said that there was any connection between any investigations and security assistance, a Presidential meeting, or anything else.Footnote 59
On the obstruction charge, Trump's lawyers argued that “[i]n every instance, when there was resistance to a subpoena … for a witness or for documents, there is a legal explanation and justification for it.”Footnote 60
After six days of opening arguments, two days of senators posing questions to the legal teams, and one day of closing arguments,Footnote 61 the Senate debated whether to hear testimony from witnesses.Footnote 62 Contemporaneous with the parties’ opening arguments, the New York Times had reported that an unpublished manuscript of a book by John Bolton, the national security advisor during the summer of 2019, included claims that Trump directed him to help pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.Footnote 63 The House impeachment managers believed that Bolton's testimony would supply the firsthand evidence against Trump that Republicans claimed was lacking.Footnote 64 On January 31, the Senate voted 51–49 not to hear from additional witnesses, with two Republican Senators joining the forty-seven Democrats who favored hearing from these witnesses.Footnote 65
On February 5, the Senate voted to acquit Trump on both charges.Footnote 66 Fifty-two Republicans voted “not guilty” on the abuse of power charge, while Republican Senator Mitt Romney and all forty-seven Democrats voted “guilty.”Footnote 67 All fifty-three Republicans voted “not guilty” on the obstruction of justice charge, while all forty-seven Democrats voted “guilty.”Footnote 68 Trump thus became the third president in U.S. history to be impeached but not convicted.Footnote 69
