Despite his best attempts at deflection and distraction, the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump has gathered significant steam this week as bombshell testimony and further revelations bolstered the accusations being levelled at the president.
Refresh my memory – what’s going on again?
Democrats are investigating allegations that Trump used the power of his office to pressure a foreign government into discrediting his leading rival in next year’s presidential election, Joe Biden.
The impeachment inquiry was sparked by a still-anonymous intelligence official who was so worried about what Trump said in a call to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, he took his concerns to the top levels of the US intelligence services.
I remember now. OK, what’s happened this week?
Well, quite a bit but let’s start on Tuesday with a sadly typical outburst from President Donald Trump.
There’s a time and a place for a white president to compare his own circumstances to a lynch.... oh hang on a sec, no there absolutely is not.
And so it caused quite the kerfuffle when Trump did just that on Tuesday, when he likened the impeachment inquiry to the ritual, extrajudicial mob killing of mostly black Americans during the early part of the last century.
Under pressure over impeachment, his Syria policy and other issues, the president tweeted: “So some day, if a Democrat becomes President and the Republicans win the House, even by a tiny margin, they can impeach the President, without due process or fairness or any legal rights.
“All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here – a lynching. But we will WIN!”
The highest-ranking African American in Congress, Jim Clyburn, warned the president about the comparison, saying: “That is one word no president ought to apply to himself. That is a word that we ought to be very, very careful about using.”
Wednesday was biggie for the impeachment inquiry – testimony from a senior US diplomat appeared to confirm the accusations agains the president.
William Taylor, a former ambassador to Ukraine, told House Investigators that Trump was holding back military aid for Ukraine unless the country agreed to investigate Democrats and a company linked to Joe Biden’s family.
In a lengthy opening statement, he provided a detailed new account of the quid pro quo central to the impeachment probe, claiming he had discovered an “irregular” back channel to foreign policy led by the president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, that caused “ultimately alarming circumstances”.
In a date-by-date account the seasoned diplomat, who came out of retirement in June to take over as charge d’affaires at the embassy in Ukraine, detailed his mounting concern as he realised Trump was trying to put the newly elected president of the young democracy “in a public box”, the Associated Press reports.
“I sensed something odd,” he testified, describing a trio of Trump officials planning a call with Zelenskiy, including one, Ambassador Gordon Sondland, who wanted to make sure “no one was transcribing or monitoring” it.
How did that go down?
Politicians who emerged after nearly 10 hours of the private deposition were stunned at Taylor’s account, which some Democrats said established a “direct line” to the alleged quid pro quo at the centre of the impeachment probe.
“It was shocking,” said Representative Karen Bass, a California Democrat. “It was very clear that it was required — if you want the assistance, you have to make a public statement.”
Escalating the potential scandal even further is the fact the account reaches to the highest levels of the administration, drawing in Vice President Mike Pence and Trump’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney.
It also lays bare the struggle between Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton and those who a previous State Department witness described as the “three amigos” — Sondland, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and special envoy Kurt Volker — who were involved in the alternative Ukraine policy in relation to Russia.
What did the White House say?
In typical fashion, the White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham, attempted to bat aside the testimony and shift attention elsewhere.
“President Trump has done nothing wrong,” she said. “This is a coordinated smear campaign from far-left lawmakers and radical unelected bureaucrats waging war on the Constitution. There was no quid pro quo.”
Anything else notable happen on Wednesday?
Well, funny you should ask because yes, yes it did.
A number of Trump’s fellow Republicans briefly brought the Democrat-led impeachment investigation to a halt when around two dozen of them stormed into a closed-door deposition with a Defence Department official.
What?! Why?
Essentially it was a crude, childish but relatively successful attempt to draw the focus away from Taylor’s testimony. So with that in mind, we shall say no more about it.
Meanwhile on Twitter, Trump was publicly pondering the whereabouts of something that, by its very nature, is being kept hidden from him.
On Thursday, more evidence of wrongdoing became known - only this time from the Ukrainian side of the affair.
It was reported that Ukraine’s then-new president Zelenskiy was already worried about pressure from Trump to investigate Biden, long before the July 25 call phone call that sparked the inquiry.
According to three sources close to the case, Zelenskiy gathered a small group of advisers on May 7 in Kiev for a meeting that was scheduled to discuss energy supplies, but instead spent three hours discussing Trump and Rudy Giuliani.
The three people’s recollections differ on whether Zelenskiy specifically cited that first call with Trump as the source of his unease. But their accounts all show the Ukrainian president-elect was wary of Trump’s push for an investigation into the former vice president and his son Hunter’s business dealings.
Either way, the newly elected leader of a country wedged between Russia and the US-aligned Nato democracies knew early on that vital military support might depend on whether he was willing to choose a side in an American political tussle.
Do we know anything else about the time before the July call?
The meeting noted above came before Zelenskiy was inaugurated but about two weeks after Trump called to offer his congratulations on the night of the Ukrainian leader’s April 21 election, according to three people familiar with details of the meeting, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
The full details of what the two leaders discussed in that Easter Sunday phone call have never been publicly disclosed, and it is not clear whether Trump explicitly asked for an investigation of the Bidens.
Zelenskiy’s office in Kiev did not respond to messages on Wednesday seeking comment. The White House would not comment on whether Trump demanded an investigation in the April 21 call.
The White House has offered only a bare-bones public readout on the April call, saying Trump urged Zelenskiy and the Ukrainian people to implement reforms, increase prosperity and “root out corruption”.
Trump has said he would release a transcript of the first call, but the White House had no comment Wednesday on when, or if, that might happen.
Sounds like the White House is stalling?
Yes and they’re getting some help from the US Justice Department on that front too. In what can only be construed as an attempt to shift attention from the impeachment inquiry, the department shifted its review of the Special Counsel Russia probe to a criminal investigation.
It is not clear what potential crimes are being investigated, but the designation as a formal criminal investigation gives prosecutors the ability to issue subpoenas, potentially empanel a grand jury and compel witnesses to give testimony and bring federal criminal charges.
The Justice Department had previously considered it to be an administrative review, and US Attorney General William Barr appointed John Durham, the US attorney in Connecticut, to lead the inquiry into the origins of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Isn’t the Justice Department supposed to be independent of the president?
Yes it is, but Barr’s loyalty to Trump over the rule of law is being questioned.
The chairmen of the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees, which are leading the impeachment inquiry, said in a statement late on Thursday that the reports “raise profound new concerns” that Barr’s Department of Justice “has lost its independence and become a vehicle for President Trump’s political revenge”.
“If the Department of Justice may be used as a tool of political retribution, or to help the president with a political narrative for the next election, the rule of law will suffer new and irreparable damage,” Democratic Representatives Jerrold Nadler and Adam Schiff said.
It’s nearly the weekend, surely things calmed down a bit on Friday?
Absolutely not – Friday saw one of the most significant developments yet.
In an attempt to delegitimise the impeachment inquiry, Trump and his fellow Republicans have repeatedly branded it “illegal”, arguing that it requires a formal vote in the House, something the Democrats did not do.
The Justice Department has used this argument to withhold material obtained during the Mueller investigation that Democrats want to see in order to build their impeachment case.
But on Friday, Chief US District Judge Beryl Howell ruled the Trump administration was “wrong”, adding: “A House resolution has never, in fact, been required.”
The president however, appeared to have more pressing issues on his mind...