WASHINGTON, DC—In the week and a bit since the topic of President Donald Trump’s conduct toward Ukraine emerged as a major source of news, the revelations and developments have been relentless — documents declassified and released, an impeachment inquiry established, witnesses subpoenaed, barrages of presidential tweets launched. You may be forgiven if you need to catch up on what exactly is going on. What is Trump alleged to have done? Is there a chance he can actually be fired over this? How does it all work? Here’s a primer on impeachment and the current situation. What is President Trump accused of doing?The primary allegations are that Trump solicited foreign interference in the upcoming presidential election, abused his control over U.S. foreign policy to do so, and then engaged in a coverup to prevent the American government and people from learning about it. At the heart of it all is a phone conversation Trump had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that became the subject of a whistle-blower complaint from someone working in the U.S. intelligence community. A publicly released partial transcript of the call shows Trump responding to Zelenskiy’s plea for military aid with the phrase, “I would like you to do us a favour, though,” and then requesting that Ukraine begin investigations both into a conspiracy theory dealing with servers hacked in the 2016 election and into potential Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. He suggests in the call that Zelinskiy should work with Rudy Giuliani, who is not employed by the U.S. government and has been acting as Trump’s personal lawyer, and with Attorney General William Barr on investigating Biden. About a week prior to the call in July, Trump had personally suspended $391 million in aid to Ukraine for reasons that were never specified. After congress was made aware of the existence of the whistle-blower complaint, the funds were released to the Ukraine. T ...
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