President Donald Trump faces an impeachment inquiry in the wake of a recent whistleblower complaint alleging that he asked Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 presidential election by investigating Democratic candidate Joe Biden, and his son Hunter.
Central to the inquiry is a July 25 phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky. Zelensky has denied that anyone pressured him to investigate Biden’s son, but many lawmakers are not convinced.
As Congress probes deeper and House Democrats begin issuing subpoenas and scheduling depositions, a dizzying array of Ukrainians and Americans—some already high-profile and others largely unknown to the general public until now—have emerged as key players.
Here’s a breakdown of who’s who in the Ukraine investigation.
Hunter Biden, 49, is the younger son of former Vice President and 2020 presidential contender Joe Biden.
Hunter Biden is at the center of Trump’s claims of corruption against his father—which the President and his allies continue to make without evidence. Joe and Hunter Biden are also key individuals in the whistleblower complaint, which accuses Trump of pressuring Ukraine to investigate them.
Hunter Biden’s position as a paid board member for a Ukrainian energy company has raised questions about a possible conflict of interest for his father. The younger Biden earned a reported $50,000-a-month salary from Ukrainian energy company Burisma for his advice on corporate governance and best practices.
Trump has suggested in unproven but nettlesome allegations that Hunter Biden was under Ukrainian prosecutors’ scrutiny for corruption and that his father protected him by pressuring Ukraine to oust Viktor Shokin, the prosecutor who had opened an investigation into the owner of Burisma.
In a White House summary of the July phone call between Trump and Zelensky, the American president was noted as saying, “there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son” and Joe “Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… it sounds horrible to me.”
Claims that Biden stepped in to block the inquiry are widely disputed, including by Joe Biden himself.
In a March 2016 trip to Kiev, Joe Biden had told Ukrainian leadership to fire Shokin, the country’s top prosecutor. Biden, like other officials in the U.S. and Western nations, believed Shokin was not doing enough to root out corruption. With international pressure mounting, Shokin was replaced later that month after a vote in Ukraine’s parliament.
Shokin had previously opened an investigation into the owner of Burisma, the Associated Press reported.
Hunter Biden joined the board of Ukranian energy company Burisma in 2014, but is no longer on the board, as of early 2019, according to the Washington Post.
Hunter Biden’s hiring in 2014 coincided with the launch of a new effort by Burisma to lobby the U.S. Congress about the role of the company in Ukraine and the country’s quest for energy independence. A Burisma spokesman said at the time that Hunter Biden had not been involved in contacting members of Congress or the Obama Administration about the company.
Hunter Biden has denied using his influence with his father to help Burisma, according to the Associated Press. Joe Biden’s campaign has said that the former Vice President’s work in foreign policy was not affected by his son’s activities in the country and they never discussed it either, the New York Times reported.
Joe Biden has also denied the president’s allegations, saying that Trump was “lying about his family” in a fundraising message.
Rudy Giuliani is the President’s personal lawyer and the former mayor of New York City.
The whistleblower complaint describes Rudy Giuliani as a “central figure” in Trump’s alleged attempts to pressure Ukraine to investigate Biden and his son.
Giuliani was subpoenaed Monday by the House Intelligence Committee. The subpoena stated that the committee is investigating “credible allegations” that Giuliani “acted as an agent of the President in a scheme to advance his personal political interests by abusing the power” of his office. The letter highlighted Giulianni’s declaration on CNN that he “asked the government of Ukraine” to investigate Biden—a claim that Giulianni appeared to walk back and forth while on air. When prodded by anchor Chris Cuomo to clarify his position, Giuliani eventually said he asked Ukraine to “investigate the allegations that relate to the false charges against” Trump and that “those allegations tangentially involve Biden.”
House investigators, in a subpoena, also asserted that Giulianni said he possessed evidence (text messages, phone records and other communications) suggesting that “other Trump Administration officials may have been involved in this scheme” and demanded that he produce these “communications” and “other related documents” by Oct. 15.
The whistleblower complaint alleges that in several instances, Giuliani unofficially reached out to Ukrainian officials and relayed messages to and from Trump.
The whistleblower complaint said Giuliani’s alleged interference created so much confusion and harm that U.S. State Department officials allegedly spoke with Giuliani in an effort to “contain the damage” to America’s national security.
They also met with members of the Ukrainian administration to help them understand and respond to inconsistent messages received from official channels and through Giuliani, according to the whistleblower.
Giuliani has been defiant in the face of allegations of wrongdoing, and told CNN the day the whistleblower’s complaint was released that he has “no knowledge of any of that crap.”
He specifically denied that State Department officials spoke with him to “contain the damage.” “At no time did either one of them say they wanted to ‘contain damage,’” Giuliani told CNN.
Giuliani has also said multiple times that he would only testify in relation to the impeachment inquiry if Trump gives him permission and that the president “was framed by the Democrats,” the Associated Press reports.
Giuliani has continued to say in television appearances that the focus should be on Joe Biden and his son’s private business dealings in Ukraine—despite no evidence of wrongdoing. He has been emphatic about his alleged innocence, even telling The Atlantic in an interview that “It is impossible that the whistle-blower is a hero and I’m not. And I will be the hero! These morons—when this is over, I will be the hero.”
The Biden campaign has reached out to television networks, demanding that Giuliani be kept off the air so he can no longer “spread false, debunked conspiracy theories on behalf of Donald Trump,” the New York Times reported.
William Barr is Attorney General of the United States — making him the nation’s top law enforcement officer and the head of the U.S. Department of Justice. He was appointed to the position by Trump on February 2019 and confirmed by a 54-45 vote in the Senate.
The whistleblower complaint alleged that Barr “appears to be involved” with Trump’s alleged efforts to pressure the Ukranian government.
The complaint did not specifically detail Barr’s involvement, as it did with Giuliani. But it did state that White House officials with direct knowledge of the call between Trump and Zelensky mentioned that the President pressured Zelensky to meet Barr, who was “named explicitly” as the President’s “personal envoy,” along with Giuliani.
Trump suggested to Zelensky during the July phone call that he follow up with the Attorney General about looking into Biden and his son, according to a summary of the conversation released by the White House. “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,” the summary noted Trump as saying. That document also mentioned that Trump had told Zelensky that he would tell Barr to call him.
Barr’s possible involvement has raised concerns about his impartiality among key players related to the inquiry. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said last week that Barr had “gone rogue”, was part of a “coverup of the coverup” and questioned his ability to make decisions “about how the complaint would be handled.”
Barr was previously criticized for how he handled the Mueller report, with some Democrats accusing him of choosing to “be the President’s lawyer,” instead of maintaining a degree of necessary independence from the White House.
The Justice Department said Monday that Trump recently asked the Australian prime minister and other foreign leaders to help Barr investigate how the Russia probe began, according to the Associated Press.
Barr assigned U.S. Attorney John Durham to investigate the origins of the probe.
The Justice Department has denied that Barr ever spoke with Trump “about having Ukraine investigate anything related to” Biden or his son in a statement last week.
“The Attorney General has not communicated with Ukraine – on this or any other subject,” said Kerri Kupec, spokesperson for the Department of Justice. “Nor has the Attorney General discussed this matter, or anything relating to Ukraine, with Rudy Giuliani.”
Volodymyr Zelensky, a comedian who formerly played the President of Ukraine on television, was elected to the office in reality earlier this year with 73% of the vote—the highest margin in the country’s post-Soviet history. He is a member of the Servant of the People party (which he founded, and named after his TV show). His party holds a majority of seats in the Ukrainian parliament. His campaign strongly emphasized fighting the country’s endemic corruption.
Zelensky was on the other end of the Trump phone call that sparked the whistleblower’s complaint. The complaint said that Trump had used the call “to pressure the Ukrainian leader to take actions to help the President’s 2020 reelection bid” by pushing Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden, Hunter Biden and others.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi cited allegations that Trump requested that Zelensky “take actions which would benefit [Trump] politically” in her announcement that the House had launched a formal impeachment inquiry into the President’s conduct.
The whistleblower’s complaint also alleged that Zelensky met with the U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine, Kurt Volker, and U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, who talked to him about how to “navigate” the President’s demands. U.S. officials also said that Zelensky’s advisors met with Giuliani, the complaint said.
The Ukrainian leadership was “led to believe” that whether or not Zelensky would have a call with Trump hinged on Zelensky’s “willingness to ‘play ball’” with the issues Giuliani and Lutsenko had raised, the whistleblower complaint said.
Zelensky has denied that anyone pressured him to investigate Biden’s son. Sitting with Trump at the United Nations on Sept. 25, Zelensky declared “nobody pushed me” and said that the call with Trump was “normal.”
He added that he does not have the authority to put pressure on Ukrainian law enforcement, even if he had been pressured.
“We have an independent country and independent general security. I can’t push anyone,” Zelensky said.
Yuriy Lutsenko served as the Ukrainian Prosecutor General from May 2016 until Aug. 29 this year, a few months after Ukraine’s new president, Zelensky, took office. He formerly served as the head of the country’s Ministry of Interior (which oversees the Ukrainian police, National Guard, and State Border Service) and was a member of the Ukrainian parliament.
He was arrested in December 2010 and received several charges, including for financial crimes, although the European Union argued that the cases against him were politically motivated, and he was pardoned in 2013 by former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.
Starting in March 2019, Mr. Lutsenko made a series of public allegations—many of which he later walked back—about the Biden family’s activities in Ukraine, Ukrainian officials’ purported involvement in the 2016 U.S. election, and the activities of the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, according to the whistleblower complaint.
Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, met with Lutsenko at least twice—once in New York in January and again in Poland in February—the complaint said.
The whistleblower complaint also alleges that Trump praised Lutsenko during his July 25 phone call and suggested that Zelensky retain him as prosecutor general.
In the summary of Trump’s call that the White House released, Trump does not refer to Lutsenko by name, but he tells Zelensky, “I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that’s really unfair.”
When Zelensky tells Trump that he is thinking of replacing the Prosecutor General, Trump tells him that he heard the prosecutor was “treated very badly” although he was “very fair.”
Lutsenko has given numerous interviews to American news media—including several that appear to be contradictory. Some of the interviews include talking points that Trump brought up in his call with Zelensky.
Lutsenko told the Hill in March that he was launching an investigation into allegations that an Ukrainian official attempted to help Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
The whistleblower’s complaint said Lutsenko and other Ukrainian officials claimed that Biden had pressured former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to fire the previous Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin in an effort to “quash” an investigation of Burisma Holdings, where Hunter Biden served on the board.
Lutsenko’s deputy told the New York Times in May that Lutsenko was investigating “millions of dollars of payments from Burisma to the firm that paid Hunter Biden.” Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas company embroiled in scandal, paid $3.4 million to a company called Rosemont Seneca Bohai in 2014, the Times reported, referring to financial data from the Ukrainian deputy prosecutor. The Rosemont Seneca Bohai, in turn, paid Hunter Biden as much as $50,000 a month, the Times said, citing bank records.
On May 7, Lutsenko’s spokesperson denied to Bloomberg that the office had reopened the investigation into Burisma Holdings or its owner.
Lutsenko then told reporters after Trump’s Ukraine call leaked, that he does not feel that Ukraine has reason to investigate Joe or Hunter Biden. He did, however, acknowledge meeting with Giuliani.
Lutsenko told the BBC on Sept. 29 that he had “nothing, certainly” to prove that Hunter Biden violated Ukrainian law.
Viktor Shokin was Ukraine’s Prosecutor General from 2015 to 2016. He was succeeded by Lutsenko.
He was removed from his position by Ukrainian parliament after accusations that he was soft on corruption following pressure from then-Vice President Joe Biden and other western governments.
Shokin’s firing is central to claims Trump has made, without evidence, that Biden used his position as Vice President to protect his son Hunter’s private business dealings.
Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate these allegations, according to the whistleblower complaint.
As Vice President, Joe Biden had been vocal about rooting out corruption in Ukraine. He traveled to Kiev in March 2016 and pressed for Shokin’s removal. Biden later said during a 2018 speech before the Council on Foreign Relations that he had threatened to withhold a billion-dollar loan guarantee until he was assured the prosecutor was ousted. The Ukrainian parliament eventually voted to remove the prosecutor, that same month, in March 2016, after international pressure. Shokin faced widespread accusations of allowing corruption to fester, according to a statement by at least one former Obama Administration official.
Tom Malinowski, former assistant secretary of state in the Obama Administration, tweeted on Sept. 25 that “all of us working on Ukraine wanted this prosecutor gone, because he was NOT prosecuting corruption. So did the Europeans. So did the IMF.”
As chief prosecutor, Shokin had opened an investigation into the owner of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky, the Associated Press reported.
There is disagreement over whether Shokin would have actually gone after Burisma.
Daria Kaleniuk, co-founder of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, a Ukrainian organization that works on anti-corruption initiatives in the country, told the BBC that Shokin was not a “tough prosecutor who was willing to investigate Burisma.” If anything, the opposite was true and Shokin was “dumping this investigation,” she said, adding that she has been following the investigation since 2014.
Shokin told the Washington Post earlier this year that he believes he lost his position because he was investigating Burisma. He said that if he was still prosecutor he would have looked into the younger Biden’s qualifications to be a board member, citing Hunter Biden’s lack of experience in working in Ukraine or the energy sector, the Post reported.
Mykola Zlochevsky is a former Ukrainian ecology and natural resources minister and the owner of Burisma Holdings, an oil and gas industry holding company.
Since Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, joined the board of Burisma Holdings in the spring of 2014, some of the former Vice President’s critics have called the connection inappropriate.
While Joe Biden and the Obama Administration were calling for a crackdown on corruption in Ukraine, Zlochevsky was among the subjects of a money laundering investigation by the United Kingdom’s Serious Fraud Office.
The investigation lasted from 2014 until June 2018, when it was closed due to a lack of evidence. Burisma had announced in winter 2017 that the investigation of Burisma and Zlochevsky had closed. In 2015 remarks about corruption, the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, criticized the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s office for failing to release documents that could have supported the seizure of Zlochevsky’s money, which was being held in the case. He did not say when this occurred.
The whistleblower’s complaint said that Lutsenko had accused Joe Biden of trying to “quash a purported criminal probe” into Burisma Holdings by pressuring the former Ukrainian President to fire Lutsenko’s predecessor, Shokin.
Trump appears to have referred to these allegations during his July 25 phone call with Zelensky. Trump said that Joe Biden “stopped the prosecution” of a case concerning Hunter Biden, according to the summary 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 said.
After the whistleblower’s complaint emerged, Lutsenko told multiple news outlets that he did not have any evidence that the Bidens violated Ukrainian law.
Zlochevsky has not spoken to U.S. news outlets about the controversy.
After Hunter Biden joined the company’s board, the chairman of the board of directors said in a statement, “The company’s strategy is aimed at the strongest concentration of professional staff and the introduction of best corporate practices, and we’re delighted that Mr. Biden is joining us to help us achieve these goals.”
The law firm representing Zlochevsky in the United Kingdom, Peters & Peters, said in a statement to the Guardian in 2017 that their client did not violate the law during his time as a minister, saying that he had made his wealth before his time in office.
“Mr. Zlochevsky has followed the letter and spirit of the law in his role as civil servant and has, at all times, held himself to the highest moral and ethical standards in his business dealings and public functions,” the statement said, adding that he had “fallen victim to an entrenched and a cynical programme of smear campaigns and misinformation.”
Yovanovitch is a career diplomat who served as the U.S. Ambassador to Armenia and Kyrgyzstan before being named ambassador to Ukraine in Aug. 2016.
She was recalled from the post in May. Eliot L. Engel, the Chairman of the House’s Foreign Affairs Committee, and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, in a joint statement, called the White House decision to recall her a “political hit job.”
The whistleblower’s complaint said that Yovanovitch might have lost her ambassadorship as a result of accusations against her by Lutsenko.
The complaint notes that Yovanovitch was among the targets of allegations made by Lutsenko and his colleagues in interviews with the Hill. According to the complaint, the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, and Yovanvitch in particular, had been accused of obstructing corruption cases by providing a “do not prosecute” list and by blocking Ukrainian prosecutors from traveling to the United States to provide “evidence” about the 2016 election.
The State Department denied that Yovanovitch was recalled early, saying in a statement to reporters that she was “concluding her three-year diplomatic assignment in Kiev in 2019 as planned.”
The complaint also said that Yovanovitch’s time as ambassador was “curtailed because of pressure stemming from Mr. Lutsenko’s accusations.”
Trump criticized Yovanovitch during his phone call with the Ukrainian President. According to the White House’s summary of the call, Trump said, “The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news.” Yovanovitch is the first and only female ambassador to Ukraine.
Yovanovitch is scheduled to testify as part of the impeachment inquiry on Wednesday. She has not commented on the allegations against the President publicly.
Joseph Maguire is the acting Director of National Intelligence, who stepped in to lead the agency in August after his predecessor Dan Coats stepped down, along with Coats’ deputy. He was previously serving as the head of the National Counterterrorism Center. He has a 36-year military career under his belt and his former colleagues described him as someone who is “not a political hack.”
Maguire came under fire from House Democrats for withholding the whistleblower complaint from lawmakers for weeks. The Director of National Intelligence is legally required to submit a complaint from the Inspector General to the requisite oversight committee within seven days. But the Inspector General noted in his Sept. 9 letter to the House Intelligence committee that he believed Maguire determined he would not be required to pass along the concern to Congress because for him, the allegations did not meet the standard of an “urgent concern,” as written in law.
Maguire testified before the House Intelligence committee Sept. 26 after being subpoenaed. The retired Navy vice admiral defended his reluctance to share the report during the hearing, saying he believed it may have been covered by executive privilege. He said repeatedly that he sought guidance from officials from the White House and the Justice Department on the matter.
But Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff argued that the law still required Maguire to pass along whistleblower complaints to the House and Senate intelligence committees.
Maguire told lawmakers he believed that the whistleblower is “operating in good faith” and “did the right thing.” But he would not explicitly say whether he found the allegation to be “credible” when asked by Schiff. Maguire instead said “it’s not for me to judge” and added that he does not criticize the inspector general for finding the allegation to be credible.
Maguire would not tell lawmakers whether he had spoken to Trump about the complaint, noting that it would be “inappropriate” to comment on the matter because his conversations with Trump are privileged because of his role as acting Director of National Intelligence.
