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Credit to Author: Matt Laslo| Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2019 20:14:31 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n An eventful week on Capitol Hill is only the beginning of a very long road.<\/p>\n This week saw a flurry of consequential activity on Capitol Hill: a formal impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump, an approximate transcript of a controversial call between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky<\/a>, and a whistle-blower complaint<\/a> that accuses Trump and associates of serious misdeeds. But House Democrats argue that they\u2019re only just getting started.<\/p>\n In the party\u2019s first hearing since formally upping the ante against Trump, acting director of national intelligence Joseph Maguire\u2019s testimony<\/a> before the House Intelligence Committee Thursday was filled with more singular flare-gun shots than any real fireworks, besides the usual hyper-partisan sparks that erupted from all sides.<\/p>\n Still, even as Democrats recognize the whistleblower report, which went live ahead of the high profile hearing, may not contain the smoking gun many in the party have longed for, many say it provides them the coordinates to reach their ultimate goal: holding Trump ultimately accountable for his multitude of alleged misdeeds.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a road map,\u201d representative Peter Welch (D-Vermont) told WIRED upon leaving the hearing. \u201cYou know, the reference to the many people who were witness to the call, witness to the things that the president said\u2014there was no investigation that was done here.\u201d<\/p>\n Welch and the vast majority of House Democrats\u2014including their party leaders, who up until this week have resisted calls to \u201cimpeach the motherfucker<\/a>,\u201d in the words of representative Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan)\u2014now see their job as filling in the gaps that the administration has failed to provide.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are obvious steps to follow up. Things that the FBI would normally do when there was a complaint,\u201d Welch said. \u201cThe content that we have in the [whistleblower] report itself, all of that is available for investigatory follow up, both by the committee, also by journalists.\u201d<\/p>\n The White House then tried to email those talking points to all Republicans on the Hill, only to accidentally send them to Democrats as well.<\/p>\n The scope of the probe, at least in many Democrat\u2019s minds, is narrowing. They say the whistleblower gives them new strings to pull that have nothing to do with the initial Russia investigation headed by former special counsel Robert Mueller. A Russia-related Judiciary Committee probe remains underway, albeit with limited support than the latest Ukraine investigation. But while it has commanded less recent attention, the two seem inexorably linked.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re talking about the same guy. This is not exactly some kind of aberration in terms of his conduct,\u201d says representative Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland). \u201cThe [Democratic] Caucus is unified around the lawlessness and corruption pouring forth from the White House, and our job will be to reduce it to a set of articles of impeachment that makes sense to the country.\u201d<\/p>\n Now they have a government whistleblower\u2019s report to mine, one that looks rich with leads.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m now more worried than ever,\u201d senator Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) told reporters at the Capitol.<\/p>\n Murphy sits on the Foreign Relations Committee and views the report as damning. He says it implicates Trump\u2019s inner sanctum of advisors and top government representatives. So he\u2019s urging his House counterparts\u2014many of whom are friends of his; Murphy served in that chamber for six years before he jumped to the Senate in 2013\u2014to pull as many threads as they can.<\/p>\n And he\u2019s got Trump\u2019s top dogs on his radar, including (but by no means limited to) secretary of state Mike Pompeo, the US special representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker, embassy staff in Kiev, and even the ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, who Murphy says \u201cappears to be compromised.\u201d House Democrats subpoenaed Pompeo Friday afternoon, demanding documnets pertaining to Trump and Ukraine.<\/p>\n \u201cThis seems absolutely extraordinary,\u201d Murphy bemoaned. \u201cHow many people were trying to get the Ukrainians to do the president\u2019s reelection bidding?\u201d<\/p>\n Republicans laugh off such claims. Former Freedom Caucus chair Mark Meadows is a top ally of the president. He was one of just 12 Republicans invited to the White House early Wednesday morning to get a private glimpse of the transcript of the president\u2019s call with the Ukrainian president before it was publicly released later.<\/p>\n The North Carolina Republican is in lock step with Trump and the GOP\u2019s powerful media messaging machine in dismissing the whistleblower, whom The New York Times<\/em> reported<\/a> Thursday is a CIA analyst, as a few steps too removed from the Oval Office to be taken seriously.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m ready to hear from someone who has firsthand knowledge,\u201d Meadows tells WIRED, dismissing the whistleblower report as hearsay. \u201cIt was creative writing, but it was plagiarism,\u201d Meadows says.<\/p>\n Republicans like Meadows came out of their White House meeting unified in their talking points. The White House then tried to email those talking points to all Republicans on the Hill, only to accidentally send them to Democrats as well. A Democratic source gleefully forwarded them to reporters even after the White House tried to \u201crecall\u201d the email.<\/p>\n But lawyers like freshman congresswoman Madeleine Dean (D-Pennsylvania) argue that the carefully crafted\u2014if liberally distributed\u2014talking points ring hollow once you look at the evidence.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s obviously a very credible report. It mirrors very much the record of that call\u2014that the White House bafflingly released\u2014proving that the president was willing to extort a newly elected democratic leader,\u201d Dean tells WIRED. \u201cIt\u2019s extraordinary.\u201d<\/p>\n