In this week's episode of Snollygoster, Ohio's politics podcast from WOSU, host Steve Brown discusses a whistleblower's allegations that President Trump tried to use leverage over Ukraine for political favors. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D- Toledo) joins the show to explain why this scandal pushed her towards supporting impeachmwent proceedings.
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On this week's episode:
Blowing The Whistle
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ordered an impeachment inquiry into President Trump this week, following a whistleblower complaint over a phone conversation where Trump reportedly asked the Ukranian president to investigate his 2020 political rival Joe Biden.
Several Democratic Ohio representatives announced their support of the inquiry, including Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Toledo), the longest serving woman in Congress as well as the co-chair of the Ukrainian Caucus. It was the first time Kaptur publicly backed impeachment.
"No member of Congress has traveled to Ukraine as many times as I, even long before the Berlin Wall fell," Kaptur wrote in a statement. "Trump cannot be allowed to break the laws of our country with impunity."
On Thursday morning, the House intelligence committee met to question the Joseph Maguire, acting director of National Intelligence, about the whistleblower's allegations. The panel was led by Democratic committee chair Adam Schiff, who said the entire point of the phone call to the Ukrainian president was for Trump to hurt a political opponent.
Kaptur's support of impeachment came before the White House released its memo about the original phone call, and before the House committee published a copy of the whistleblower's complaint. Kaptur said those documents only solidifed her position.
"This is completely outside the boundaries of what is normal behavior of a president," Kaptur said.
Republicans say that a White House account about the phone call prove nothing. They focused on the issue of whether the complaint had to be immediately forwarded to Congress since it revolved around a conversation involving the President and therefore executive privilege.
Snollygoster Of The Week
Sen. Rob Portman fell in line with other Republicans this week, putting out a statement against impeachment. "The American people want us to get things done for them rather than focus on more and more partisan investigations," Portman said.
In 1999, when he was in Congress, Portman obviously felt differently - he was among the representatives who voted to impeach President Clinton.
If you have a suggestion or comment for the show, email snollygoster@wosu.org.
