How a Phone Call Led to an Impeachment Inquiry

9月中旬，报告举办举报人提出投诉对美国的总统被宣布在媒体中。众议院颁发了一份全报告的传票，但国家情报署署长拒绝遵守。不久之后，报道The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal透露，该报告与唐纳德特朗普和乌克兰总统Volodymyr Zelensky Zelensky之间的呼吁有关。作为详细揭示了呼吁弹劾开始出现，围绕着特朗普总统试图影响Zelensky以获得政治收益的问题。9月24日，南希·佩洛西的扬声器宣布房子将开始正式的弹劾探究。

我们问Igor Logvinenko和仓库arora.是Wellesley的政治科学助理教授，解释了关于这些最近事件的关键点。

Three things you need to know about the Ukrainian call controversy from Igor Logvinenko:

• The whistleblower filed a complaint with Michael Atkinson, the Intelligence Community inspector general, suggesting that in a July 25 phone call, President Trump pressured current Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to cooperate with his attorney Rudy Giuliani to investigate Hunter Biden, the son of former vice president and a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2020 election against Trump. The White House had also delayed the release of foreign aid to Ukraine (previously authorized by Congress) until a few days ago, likely after it became clear that the details of the complaint would become public.
• Unfortunately, what Hunter Biden was doing has become common practice for many Western leaders—something we have come to accept as the normal state of affairs. Gerhard Schröder, the former German chancellor serves on the boards of the largest Russian oil and gas companies; Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, advised the autocratic government of Kazakhstan, earning millions of pounds; Lord David Owen, former British foreign secretary was hired by the Yukos oil company in 2002-05, when it was the largest private company in Russia. Leading European banks, like Deutsche Bank and Danske Bank, were caught in money-laundering scandals involving Russia. My specialty is the former Soviet Union, but the examples of this abound from the London Stock Exchange changing its corporate governance standards to accommodate the listing of Saudi Aramco, to the American banks being implicated in laundering money of the Colombian cartels.
• 乌克兰新闻界正在遵循Zelensky总统到联合国峰会的访问，而Zelensky有publicly deniedthat he was being pressured by Trump, saying that the only person who can pressure him to do anything is his 6-year-old son.

Three things we need to know about the impeachment inquiry from Maneesh Arora:

• 作为many scholars have argued, impeachment is more of a政治过程比合法的. There is simply no nonpartisan or apolitical avenue to evaluate potential misconduct of a president. For Pelosi to move forward with the impeachment inquiry, she had to believe that there was enough support among Democratic lawmakers and that the American people would understand why impeachment is so important. In the days after the whistleblower allegations against President Trump were reported, many Democratic lawmakers, including centrists and those in vulnerable districts who had previously been wary of impeachment proceedings, came outin support of an impeachment inquiry. Moreover, the narrative of impeachment has become much simpler—the president used his position of power to pressure the leader of a foreign government to investigate his political opponent and even used taxpayer money as leverage. Though impeachment在选民中尚未受欢迎up until this point, that is likely to change now that voters will be receiving a consistent message from Democratic lawmakers.
• The impeachment inquiry has several potential implications. One, impeachment, corruption, and abuse of power will be a major focus of the 2020 election and will dominate the political landscape for at least the next year. Similar to the Mueller investigation, it will likely be a major distraction to President Trump’s political agenda. Two, the process may further erode public trust in government and deepen partisan chasms in an already hyper-polarized environment. Three, it sets a precedent that Congress is willing to use its strongest check on executive power to hold the president accountable for alleged abuses of power and violations of the public trust.
• 民主党有明确的优缺点，以打开弹劾探究。它可能被视为撇开权力或政治特技（或者使用总统的首选语言，“女巫狩猎”）。许多选民可能会认为，特朗普总统的命运应该在2020年11月留下选民而不是由国会决定。此外，鉴于特朗普目前的不受欢迎，它可能为他的重新选举机会提供了急需的推动。另一方面，它为民主党提供了一个机会，让特朗普涉嫌滥用权力和腐败的滥用，而这两个人倾向于公共长途的人，必须公开捍卫他们的行为。
• 美国公众和我们的民主制度也有明确的优缺点。正如我上面所说的那样，弹劾询问可能进一步侵蚀政府的信任，加深党派仇恨。但询问还允许国会做我们国家的创始人打算他们努力持有所选官员，以滥用其权力职位和违反公众信托的职务。

照片：南希·佩洛西的扬声器于2019年9月24日从国会山的星期二提供地址，从国会大厦出发，正式推出了唐纳德特朗普总统的弹劾探究。