Trump Impeachment Inquiry: Live Updates

Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the chairman of the Oversight and Reform Committee, notified his committee of the impending subpoena on Wednesday. He said the White House had thus far ignored Congress’s voluntary requests for materials related to President Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine into investigating Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son and any attempt by the administration to conceal his actions.

“I do not take this step lightly,” Mr. Cummings wrote. “Over the past several weeks, the committees tried several times to obtain voluntary compliance with our requests for documents, but the White House has refused to engage with — or even respond to — the committees.”

The subpoena threat came as lawmakers expected to hear a mysterious bit of new information abruptly offered up by the State Department’s independent watchdog.

— Nicholas Fandos

Read on: ‘We’re Not Fooling Around’: House Democrats Tell White House Subpoena Is Coming

During a meeting at the White House with President Sauli Niinisto of Finland, President Trump raged at his Democratic inquisitors.

With his guest sitting a few feet away, Mr. Trump angrily called Representative Adam B. Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, “a lowlife,” and said he “should resign from office in disgrace, and frankly they should look at him for treason.”

Mr. Trump repeated his complaint that Mr. Schiff had “fraudulently” distorted his words in a House hearing last week by summarizing part of the president’s July 25 phone call with the president of Ukraine. (Mr. Schiff said at the time that his summary was meant “at least part in parody.” Mr. Trump routinely satirizes the words of others.)

But Mr. Trump, who in a morning Twitter post said that Democrats are focused on “BULLSHIT,” chose to censor himself in a critique of Mr. Schiff, who said on Wednesday that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo may try to “interfere with witnesses” ordered to testify before Congress.

“That guy couldn’t carry his blank strap,” Mr. Trump said, unfavorably comparing Mr. Schiff to Mr. Pompeo. Mr. Trump seemed to be avoiding the words “jock strap” and using a common insult about masculinity.

Of the whistle-blower who lodged a formal complaint about Mr. Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, Mr. Trump said: “I think a whistle-blower should be protected, if the whistle-blower is legitimate.”

Mr. Trump also denounced a new book, which was adapted in an article in The New York Times, which described how he privately asked aides about bolstering his Mexican border wall with a moat filled with snakes or alligators. Mr. Trump called the report obviously “fake,” because, he erroneously said, it was the work of The Washington Post. The authors are reporters for The New York Times.

— Michael Crowley

Adam Schiff learned the outlines of the whistle-blower’s concerns days before he filed his complaint.

The C.I.A. officer who filed the whistle-blower complaint first had a colleague convey concerns about President Trump to the C.I.A.’s top lawyer. But concerned about how that avenue for airing his allegations was unfolding, the officer then approached a House Intelligence Committee aide about his allegations.

The early account by the future whistle-blower shows how determined he was to make known his allegations against Mr. Trump. It also explains how Mr. Schiff knew to press for the complaint when the Trump administration initially blocked lawmakers from seeing it.

The House staff member, following the committee’s procedures, suggested the officer find a lawyer to advise him and file a whistle-blower complaint. The aide shared some of what the officer conveyed to Mr. Schiff. The aide did not share the whistle-blower’s identity with Mr. Schiff or anyone else, an official said.

— Julian E. Barnes

Read on: Schiff, House Intel Chairman, Got Early Warning of Whistle-Blower’s Accusations

As Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke about impeachment, President Trump responded in real time.

As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi renewed her argument for impeachment on Wednesday, President Trump was watching.

Mr. Trump responded to Ms. Pelosi — in real time — on Twitter, firing off several tweets attacking the speaker and her fellow Democrats for “trying to win an election through impeachment.” The president complained that the House Democratic move to impeach him over his political pressure on Ukraine’s government to investigate his political opponents was driving down the stock market and distracting from legislative goals like prescription drug prices and passage of a new trade deal with Mexico.

He also raged that Democrats were trying to throw him out of office on illegitimate grounds.

“Democrats are trying to undo the Election regardless of FACTS!” Mr. Trump wrote, sharing a 30-second ad produced by his campaign charging that Democrats were staging “nothing short of a coup.”

— Michael Crowley

Mike Pompeo confirmed that he had listened in on Mr. Trump’s July call with Ukraine’s president.

“I was on the phone call,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said at a news conference in Rome — the first time he has addressed the topic publicly since reports surfaced that he had heard the exchange.

He did not elaborate on the conversation and did not answer a question about whether anything in it had raised a red flag for him.

Senator Robert Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called on Wednesday for Mr. Pompeo to recuse himself from “all Ukraine-related matters,” saying Mr. Pompeo had a conflict of interest because he was among the Trump administration officials on the call. Mr. Menendez’s request, made in a letter on Wednesday, followed a letter from the three House Democrats overseeing the impeachment inquiry who on Tuesday informed the deputy secretary of state, John Sullivan, that they would deal with him because they said Mr. Pompeo had a conflict of interest and could be called as a potential witness.

An anonymous whistle-blower within the government filed a complaint in August, citing the call and other factors as information 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.”

The complaint, made public last week, says that White House officials, rather than storing a record of the conversation with Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, in the usual computer system, attempted to “lock down” information on it, placing it in a more secure system, accessible to fewer people. The whistle-blower asserted this was done because they “understood the gravity of what had transpired in the call.”

— Jason Horowitz, Richard Pérez-Peña and Eileen Sullivan

Read on: Pompeo Confirms He Listened to Trump’s Call to Ukraine President

Mitch McConnell has said the Senate would have “no choice” but to take up impeachment if it passed the House. But he added: “How long you are on it is a whole different matter.”

Senator Mitch McConnell’s comment this week that the Senate would be forced to “take up” articles of impeachment from the House had the capital in a swirl, bracing for a full-blown Senate trial of President Trump. But as things now stand, any trial would probably be swift, ending in dismissal of the accusations.

While the focus was on the statement by Mr. McConnell, the majority leader, that the Senate would have “no choice” but to begin an impeachment proceeding, it was his next line that might have been more telling: “How long you are on it is a whole different matter.”

The fusty rules of the Senate make clear that Republicans could not unilaterally stonewall articles of impeachment of Mr. Trump as they did the Supreme Court nomination of Merrick B. Garland. But Mr. McConnell’s declaration suggests the Republican-controlled Senate could move expeditiously to toss them out if Republicans conclude the House impeachment is meritless, or a strictly partisan affair.

— Carl Hulse

Read more in the “On Washington” column: Impeachment Rules Say Senate Must Act, but Its Act Might Be a Swift Dismissal