--:-- [Sound of a news theme]
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): Okay, Nancy Pelosi just made a huge announcement. The actions of the Trump presidency revealed the dishonorable fact of the president's betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security, and betrayal of the integrity of our elections. Therefore, today, I'm announcing the House of Representatives moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): Andrew Prokop, Vox, we haven't had you on the show since yesterday. How did this happen so fast? You were just on telling me that Nancy Pelosi thought impeachment was a dead-end political loser. That is what she has thought all year. But Nancy Pelosi is also a leader of her caucus who can take her members' temperature and know where the party is going.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And what developed extremely quickly over the past 24 hours is a consensus among Democrats that really this latest scandal about Trump and Ukraine was just a bridge too far, that something had to be done and that the only real remedy they had was a more serious impeachment effort.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And you mentioned yesterday on the show that the progressive wing of the party was putting pressure on Pelosi. Has that pressure expanded? What really tipped the scales in the end was finally movement among a bunch of moderate Democrats.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): Democrats. In particular, on Monday night, seven freshman Democrats with military backgrounds or intelligence backgrounds, many of whom had been notable impeachment skeptics all year, wrote an op-ed saying that if these allegations are true about Trump pressuring the Ukrainian president to open an investigation about Biden, perhaps by withholding aid to the government of Ukraine, we believe these actions represent an impeachable offense.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Things just continue to escalate over the course of the day. Representative John Lewis of Georgia, who is a venerable elder statesman of the party, gave a fiery speech on the House floor saying that now was the time for impeachment. The future of our democracy is at stake.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: There come a time when you have to be moved by the spirit of history to take action to protect and preserve the integrity of our nation. I believe, I truly believe, the time to begin impeachment proceedings against this president has come.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Plugged in political reporters were using phrases like the tipping point and the dam breaking. There was just a feeling of a sudden consensus within a party that before this point had been very divided.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): We've also had news in the past 24 hours about what President Trump may or may not have said to Ukrainian President Zelensky. What have we learned?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Well, the new information that has come out is basically more details about the timeline and the specifics of Trump's effort to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid that was designed for the government of Ukraine.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Congress had approved this money and in mid-July, a few days before Trump talked to Zelensky, Trump instructed Mick Mulvaney, his acting chief of staff, to have the funds blocked while he decides whether they should go forward.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So that decision was made shortly before Trump talked to Zelensky and reportedly pressured him around eight times, according to The Wall Street Journal, to open an investigation into Biden and his family's business activities in Ukraine.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So how has President Trump responded to all of these developments? He has naturally continued to insist that he did nothing wrong. He has seemed to admit that he did mention Biden and what he calls the problem of corruption on the phone with the Ukrainian president.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But he said that he had other reasons for trying to withhold the military aid. Trump has had general objections to foreign aid and he's been trying to frame his decision to slow walk the Ukraine aid as something that was normal for his foreign policy.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But the other reports that we've been seeing coming out have essentially had the gist that this was not normal. This was something unusual and members of Congress were concerned about it.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So Trump this afternoon decided to call for the transcript unredacted of his conversation with the Ukrainian president to be released, apparently thinking that this would get him off the hook, show that it was all appropriate.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: It's important to realize that the whistleblower complaint that sparked all this was not just about this particular phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian president. It was about a broader pattern of conduct, and we still don't know all the details.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Is that transcript going to be corroborated by the whistleblower potentially? How will we know that it's genuine?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So there are basically two things that Democrats have been asking for. One is the transcript of the conversation between Trump and the Ukrainian president. But the other is the whistleblower complaint that was filed with the inspector general for the intelligence community that started this whole scandal.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: That complaint is still mysterious. And according to multiple reports, it is broader than just one single phone conversation.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So Trump seems to think that releasing this transcript, even though it will apparently reveal that he did pressure the Ukrainian president to investigate Biden, according to senior administration officials, Trump did not directly mention holding up the military aid in this phone conversation.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: However, it is just important to realize that's not the full story necessarily. And what's really important is to get this whistleblower complaint that the Trump administration is currently withholding from Congress.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And they're still withholding that? Yes. But the acting director of national intelligence and the inspector general for the intelligence community who have been handling this are scheduled to testify in closed session on Thursday and the acting director will testify for at least part of it in open session as well, which is the current plan.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: There have also been discussions about the whistleblower, him or herself, coming to Congress to testify and brief in closed session, not in public, the leaders of the House Intelligence Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee as well.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: That could happen as soon as this week. The whistleblower has an attorney who has been interacting with members of Congress to talk about how this could be done.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): Okay, so there's just a head-spinning number of developments here from the whistleblower potentially testifying to the transcript coming out to the director of national intelligence testifying before Senate.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But the big one here undoubtedly is the fact that Nancy Pelosi wants to open up impeachment hearings. What's that going to look like?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Well, there are really no hard and fast rules for how an impeachment inquiry is done in the House. It's essentially up to the House majority to run it as they see fit.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So at the end of the day, the House will have to come to a decision about whether or not to take a vote on impeachment. If a majority of members of the House vote in favor of any articles of impeachment then that means that Trump is impeached.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: What happens next is that there is a trial of Trump before the Senate and the Senate is controlled by Republicans and it also takes a two-thirds vote of the Senate to remove any president from office.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So Trump is in a much more favorable position politically to defend himself in the Senate. So the bar to removing him from office is still quite high, And unless there are further major, major developments, Democrats are not likely to clear it.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But the party has decided that it's worth pushing forward with this anyway at this point.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): It was just a week ago that Representative Nadler was having trouble rallying real support and consensus for his quasi-impeachment judiciary probe about the Mueller revelations and the Mueller investigation.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: What makes this so different? A lot of Democrats have been saying all year that it's obvious that Trump has been abusing his power in many blatant ways and deserves to be impeached.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But there was no real consensus within the party on the particular thing that they would focus on. And I think there was some hope among Democrats that the Mueller report would provide that.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But what ended up happening there was that Mueller outlined a pattern of potential obstruction of justice by President Trump. But he declined to say either way whether Trump violated the law. And it felt like old news.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And so now what has come is new news. And there are several aspects to the Ukraine scandal that do make it different.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: It's about current and ongoing allegedly corrupt behavior by President Trump trying to abuse his powers of office to interfere in the next presidential election, not a previous one.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And also the president has basically admitted to doing much of this. He said that he brought up Biden in conversation with the president of Ukraine, urging an investigation.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): If impeached, President Trump joins a very, very small club. Remind me how many presidents have been impeached before him?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: The first was Andrew Johnson in 1868. Classic. Johnson was impeached, but he ended up being acquitted in the Senate by a single vote and remained in office.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: After that, it was over 100 years before impeachment was a serious possibility again. And that came about for President Richard Nixon after the Watergate scandal.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And Nixon did not end up being impeached. There was an impeachment inquiry ongoing in the House. There were investigations in the executive branch and the Senate that unearthed a set of very damaging facts for him.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And the writing was on the wall eventually. Nixon was going to be impeached and he was going to be removed from office. So Nixon was not impeached, but he was going to be.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Then there was the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1998. Clinton was impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice related to trying to cover up his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But once again Clinton was acquitted by the Senate and got to serve out his term. So there has never been a president who was impeached and convicted in the Senate and removed from office in that process.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): Is there a chance that this all sort of blows back on Pelosi and the Democrats? I mean, Trump has proven time and again that nothing sticks to him. He is presidential Teflon, at least to his base and a majority of Republicans.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Well, this has been one reason that Democratic leaders like Pelosi have been so hesitant about impeachment. And it's been hotly disputed among political pundits everywhere about whether impeachment would be good for Trump or bad for Trump.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: There are arguments on both sides. Impeachment supporters tend to argue that high-profile media events focusing on the alleged crimes of President Trump will obviously not be good for his re-election effort.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But the arguments against impeachment being good for Democrats tend to be more about worries that they will be able to make an effective public case or in Pelosi's specific case, the House math is unfavorable for Democrats in that they have a bunch of members in their majority that are from districts that voted for Trump in 2016.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So for Pelosi to remain speaker, she needs to get a lot of these Trump district Democrats reelected. And she has believed all year that pushing for the impeachment of Donald Trump is not the best way to do that.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But the facts have changed. The pressure has built and she has apparently decided that, you know, you got to do it.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): Andrew Prokop, senior political correspondent at Vox. Thank you.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): Before we go for the day, a week ago or so, I came to you to tell you about a spinoff of Vox's Explained series on Netflix.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): It featured the voice of Emma Stone. All the episodes were about the human mind, dreams, psychedelics.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): If you watch that entire series and were like, give me more Netflix, I need more. Great news for you. There is another season of Vox's Explained series, not a spinoff, the whole thing, the regular thing that you're used to coming at you this Thursday.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): An episode will drop every Thursday thereafter for a while. You'll get nice short 15-minute doses on athleisure, on beauty, on diamonds, pirates, coding, and they're kicking the season off with cults.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): The episode features members of former cults that you've heard of from Nixxiom to Jamestown, and it explores the question of how cults get regular people to do terrible things, and then provocatively, perhaps, connects cults to religion.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): This one's narrated by Lakeith Stanfield, and you'll hear from a bunch of other famous people that you know and love in the episodes that follow.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): Check out Explained on Netflix by searching for it or just going straight to netflix.com slash explained.
