| House Democrats on Wednesday got their first look at a whistleblower complaint detailing President Trump’s actions and a summary of the president’s conversation in July with Ukraine’s president and said a day-old impeachment inquiry raised many more questions. Trump on Wednesday denied any “quid pro quo” with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky when he interjected a request for “a favor” involving information about the hacking of the Democratic National Committee in 2016 and mentioned political rival Joe Biden. The president rejected the House impeachment probe as a “tremendous hoax” and described it as a left-wing effort to avenge the Democratic Party’s loss in 2016. Zelensky, who met with Trump at the United Nations on Wednesday, told reporters the president did not push him to investigate Biden. The transcript shows Zelensky assenting to Trump’s requests in July. “I think you read everything,” he said. “I think you read [the] text. I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be involved to democratic, open elections, elections of U.S.A. … Nobody pushed me.” House and Senate Intelligence committee members, who made their way to classified rooms in the Capitol to read the complaint by a still-unidentified whistleblower, expect today to question acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire and the intelligence community’s inspector general about their handling of the intelligence official’s information following its filing last month. The document was declassified late on Wednesday after members of the House Intelligence Committee reviewed its contents. Public release or leaks are anticipated this morning (The Hill). After reading the complaint, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters that he was, “even more worried about what happened than when I read the memorandum of the conversation. There are so many facts that have to be examined. It’s very troubling” (The Hill). In the edited notes presented as a five-page transcript of the phone call with Zelensky, Trump asked the new president to contact Attorney General William Barr and Rudy Giuliani, one of his lawyers, to discuss information he sought about the former vice president’s activities in Ukraine, and about Hunter Biden, who had been a board member with a Ukrainian energy company at the time his father served in the Obama administration. “There's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that, so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great," Trump told Zelensky, according to the notes of the call.
“Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it... It sounds horrible to me,” Trump added (The Hill). A Justice Department spokeswoman said the president, at the time of the call, had “not spoken with [Barr] about having Ukraine investigate anything related to former Vice President Biden or his son,” nor had the attorney general discussed Ukraine with Giuliani (The Washington Post). The president’s advisers invited a select group of House and Senate GOP lawmakers to the White House Wednesday morning to preview the transcript before its release, and Trump called in from New York. Later, the White House mistakenly distributed its written talking points for Republicans to the offices of Democratic lawmakers, and the spin quickly emerged on Twitter. Trump’s decision to release the Zelensky transcript to Congress, which he said was necessary because “I was getting such fake news, and I just thought it would be better,” astonished Democratic lawmakers, worried those who safeguard such conversations between world leaders, and prompted some uncomfortable shrugs from Republican members. The Washington Post reported that Maguire threatened to resign this summer when he was told by higher-ups in August not to forward the whistleblower’s complaint to Congress. He denied the report on Wednesday, and Trump read Maguire’s statement aloud to reporters during a United Nations event that at times sounded like a subdued version of Trump’s customary boasts about the economy and his election victory, along with criticisms of Democrats and news outlets. “There was no quid pro quo, but there was with Biden and with these senators,” the president said, reading from notes to name Democratic senators he claimed had “threatened” Ukraine to curb corruption. Pelosi told a group of lawmakers the focus of the impeachment inquiry should remain on matters related to Ukraine. Some House Democrats want the probe to encompass a broader range of issues, which they also believe to be impeachable offenses supported by evidence (The Washington Post). The Hill: Democrats debate scope of Trump impeachment inquiry. The Hill: Whip List - Majority of House members now back the impeachment inquiry. Trump said he asked House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to press for “transparency,” not only to release the whistleblower’s complaint but also to seek disclosures “from Joe Biden and his son Hunter, on the millions of dollars that have been quickly and easily taken out of Ukraine and China.” The president told reporters he was somewhat taken aback that his dealings with Ukraine cascaded into an impeachment battle after the two-year Russia probe conducted by former special counsel Robert Mueller ended. “I thought we won. I thought it was dead,” Trump said. The president volunteered that he’s prepared to release to Congress additional transcripts, including one of an earlier conversation with Zelensky and even Vice President Pence’s conversations with Ukrainian leaders to demonstrate he and his administration did nothing wrong. “They were all perfect,” Trump said. The New York Times: Whistleblower is said to allege concerns about the White House handling of the Ukraine call; intelligence community watchdog interviewed witnesses. As Mike Lillis and Scott Wong report, House and Senate centrist Democrats are embarked on a significant political gamble before next year’s election. After months of hand-wringing, disagreements and second-guessing, Democrats remain nervous about impeachment, which polls this week show is unpopular with most Americans. Republicans who recall their own party’s woes after trying and failing to remove former President Clinton from office, believe Democrats could lose their House majority. Senators from both parties said they expect the impeachment probe to further polarize the electorate. The deep partisan fractures could spell trouble for key Republicans running in states that went heavily for Democrats in 2018 and supported Hillary Clinton in 2016, such as Sens. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), Alexander Bolton reports. However, the inquiry could mobilize Trump voters and benefit candidates in states where the president maintains high levels of support, including Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), David Perdue (R-Ga.), and Martha McSally (R-Ariz.), along with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who would pull the strings on the Senate operation if a vote ever takes place in the House. The Washington Post: Cracks emerge among Senate Republicans over Trump’s request to Zelensky to investigate Biden. The New York Times: Trump meets with Ukraine’s president and denies pressuring him. The Hill: GOP senators talk of launching a Biden probe. The Hill: Senate Democrats ask the Pentagon to investigate delays in delivery of U.S. military aid to Ukraine. The Hill: Acting intel chief Maguire inherited plenty of challenges. The Associated Press and The New York Times: Attorney General Barr again in the political fray. NBC News: Kurt Volker, an unpaid, part-time U.S. special envoy to Ukraine played a role in outreach to Giuliani, according to the former New York mayor and the State Department. Paul Kane: “The speaker speaks for us now”: How reluctant freshman Democrats endorsed impeachment of Trump. 
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