[43][44][45] On October 3, after Trump publicly called for China and Ukraine to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden,[46] Federal Election Commission (FEC) chair Ellen Weintraub reiterated that "it is illegal for any person to solicit, accept, or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with a U.S.

Firtash's attorneys obtained a September statement from Viktor Shokin, the former Ukrainian prosecutor general who was forced out under pressure from multiple countries and non-governmental organizations, as conveyed to Ukraine by Joe Biden.

Bloomberg News also reported that its sources told them Giuliani's high-profile publicity of the Shokin statement had greatly reduced the chances of the Justice Department dropping the charges against Firtash, as it would appear to be a political quid pro quo.

He was the key author of a controversial memo which was central to the Republican narrative that FBI and DOJ officials inappropriately obtained FISA warrants for several of Trump campaign staffers, including Carter Page.

[132][133][134][135] As early as April 2018, Rudy Giuliani and his associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman had apparently decided to assist President Trump's re-election efforts and they identified the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch as being a difficulty.

[147] In testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary for the State Department's Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, described the narratives about Ukraine told by Solomon and right-wing Fox News personalities Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham as "entirely made up in full cloth".

"[1] Others on the line included Tim Morrison, the National Security Council's senior director for Europe and Russia; Robert Blair, an aide to Mick Mulvaney; and Alexander Vindman, a Ukraine expert for the NSC.

[179] Volker also provided to congressional investigators a September text message exchange between Sondland, a major Trump donor and political appointee, and Bill Taylor, a career diplomat who was the senior official at the Ukrainian embassy after the recall of Ambassador Yovanovitch.

[210] White House advisor Kellyanne Conway said the procedure for handling records of Trump's calls with world leaders had been tightened early in 2017 because of leaks to the press about his conversations with the president of Mexico and the prime minister of Australia.

[220][221][224] The Washington Post reported on September 23 that at least a week before his July 25 call with Zelenskyy, Trump directed his acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to withhold[clarify] $400 million in military aid to Ukraine.

[220] The New York Times reported that "high-level Ukrainian officials" were aware that the Trump administration had purposely frozen the military aid by the first week of August 2019, and they were told to contact Mick Mulvaney to resolve the matter.

"[226] Hours later on the same day where he had issued the press conference, Mulvaney criticized the media for their coverage of his comments and denied his earlier remarks, saying that there was "no quid pro quo" regarding the withholding of aid and requests to investigate the Democrats' behavior during the 2016 election.

[21][248] As the second week of the Trump impeachment trial was set to begin in January 2020, The New York Times reported that Bolton wrote in his forthcoming book that the president had told him in August 2019 that he wanted to continue freezing the Ukraine aid until officials there pursued investigations into Democrats, including the Bidens.

[250] Bill Taylor, the United States' senior diplomatic official in Ukraine, testified in a congressional hearing that he learned in mid-July 2019 that a potential White House meeting between Trump and Zelenskyy "was conditioned on the investigations of Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S.

[31] In his November 20 testimony before the impeachment hearings, Sondland testified that the White House visit was conditioned on a public Ukrainian announcement of investigation into Burisma and the 2016 election, which he described as a quid pro quo.

[251] In testimony before congressional committees, the National Security Council's head of European Affairs, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, testified that Sondland had told Ukrainian officials in his presence that they would have to launch investigations into the Bidens in order to get a meeting with Trump.

[45] Some legal experts said there seemed to be evidence warranting an investigation into both; for example, Richard L. Hasen, an election-law scholar, believes the provision of opposition research, e.g., valuable information about a political rival, could be considered a contribution in kind under campaign finance law.

[280] According to a New York Times editorial titled "Thanks, Whistle-Blower, Your Work Is Done", only one minor item reported in the whistleblower complaint has not yet been confirmed: that T. Ulrich Brechbuhl, the Counselor for the State Department, also listened to the call.

[288][289] Senator Rand Paul and Trump Jr. both argued that naming the whistleblower is not a crime, and Robert S. Litt, former general counsel for the National Intelligence Office, said that members of Congress would be "absolutely immune" from prosecution under the Speech and Debate Clause, although they could be subject to congressional sanctions.

[314] Bondy later told The New York Times that shortly before Zelenskyy's May 20 inauguration, Parnas traveled to Kyiv to tell the incoming government that American military aid was contingent upon Ukraine's announcing an investigation of Joe Biden.

[316][317] The documents also outlined text exchanges with then Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko in which he pushed for the ouster of Yovanovitch and offered information related to former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden in return.

[322] The White House responded by dismissing the reports, claiming it was part of a routine request to grant Australian authorities access to Department of Justice resources to facilitate an investigation that had been open for several months.

[324] Barr sought information related to a conspiracy theory that Joseph Mifsud was a Western intelligence operative who allegedly entrapped Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos in order to establish a false predicate for the FBI to open an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.

[334] On January 26, The New York Times reported that former national security advisor John Bolton had written in a draft of his forthcoming book, The Room Where It Happened, that the president told him in August 2019 that he wanted to continue freezing $391 million in aid to Ukraine until officials there pursued investigations into Democrats, including the Bidens.

[336] Bolton also claimed to have discussed the suspension of aid with Attorney General William Barr, and that the two had shared concerns over Trump offering personal favours to the leaders of autocratic regimes around the world, including Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey and Xi Jinping in China.

[340] Federal prosecutors had indicated in December 2019 that it was likely new charges would be brought against Parnas, Fruman and two others,[341] as the SDNY continued to investigate Giuliani into February and the Justice Department created an "intake process" to accept and scrutinize information from him about Joe Biden.

[353] An October 21 political fact sheet release by Nancy Pelosi divided the scandal into three categories, according to the evidence, that "show Trump violated his oath of office": "The Shakedown", "The Pressure Campaign", and "The Cover-Up".

"[400] More than 300 former U.S. foreign policy and national security officials who had served under both Democratic and Republican administrations signed an open letter on September 27, supporting a congressional impeachment inquiry into Trump's conduct relating to Ukraine.

[411] Pro-Trump media outlets and commentators, such as Jeanine Pirro, Mark Levin, and Rush Limbaugh, responded by defending Trump and promoting an alternative narrative of the Ukraine affair that omitted significant facts.

[463][464][465] This conspiracy theory concerns CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity and internet security firm that first investigated the 2015–2016 hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) network and determined that Russian military intelligence (GRU) was behind these cyber attacks.