Welcome to 2020. The year of impeachment.
Here are words – a dozen quotations – all spoken by those at the heart of what, no doubt, will shape the rest of the year. Perhaps the rest of our lives. We’ll hear these words – and chew on them – over and over in coming months as Congress, the U.S. Senate and voters dissect the importance of the impeachment of President Donald John Trump, the 45th president of the United States, on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
1. “I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.”
– President Donald Trump to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, according to a rough transcript of their July 25 phone call. The White House released the four-page summary transcript in September, and it shows that Trump followed it up by asking Zelenskyy to investigate his top 2020 political opponent, Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter, who had been on the board of a Ukraine gas company, Burisma. Trump also wanted Ukraine to find evidence of a long-debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, hacked a Democratic National Committee server to interfere in our 2016 election.
2. “In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. government officials that the president of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.”