WTF Just Happened Today

Tuesday, September 24, 2019

Subscribe: Get the Daily Update in your inbox for free

1/ House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump. Pelosi told House Democrats in a closed door meeting she will support a formal impeachment inquiry, believing that Trump pressuring the president of Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden's son and his administration's subsequent refusal to share the whistleblower report with Congress has left the House with no alternative but to move forward with an inquiry. "It would be my intention with the consent of this caucus … to proceed with an impeachment inquiry," Pelosi said. "He is asking a foreign government to help him in his campaign, that is a betrayal of his oath of office." As of Tuesday afternoon, at least 166 Democrats supported some type of impeachment action — more than two-thirds of the 235-member caucus. Pelosi and top Democrats have privately discussed the creation of a special select committee – similar the one created in 1973 to investigate the Watergate scandal – to conduct the impeachment inquiry, rather than leaving the task with the House Judiciary Committee. Democrats are also discussing a resolution condemning Trump's interaction with his Ukrainian counterpart to put lawmakers on the record. Trump, meanwhile, called the allegations a "witch hunt" and said impeachment will be "a positive for me in the election." (NBC News / Washington Post / New York Times / Wall Street Journal / CNN / Bloomberg / Politico / The Guardian / The Hill)

• Who supports an impeachment inquiry against Trump? (New York Times)

2/ Trump ordered Mick Mulvaney to withhold more than $391 million in military aid from Ukraine days before he pressured the Ukrainian president to investigate Joe Biden's son. Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, passed the order through the budget office to the Pentagon and the State Department during an interagency meeting in mid-July, explaining that Trump had "concerns" about whether or not the aid was necessary. White House officials were ordered to tell lawmakers that the delays in funding were part of an "interagency process," but were instructed to give them no additional information. Trump – despite confirming that he did indeed discuss Biden with Ukraine's president – denied that he withheld aid from Ukraine in an attempt to press President Volodymyr Zelensky to dig up dirt on Biden, saying "No, I didn't — I didn't do it." Trump also argued that releasing the transcript of the phone call public would set a bad precedent. (Washington Post /