Democrats push impeachment, Trump involves China

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump on Thursday called on China to investigate the business dealings of former Vice President Joe Biden’s son. The president raised the concern to reporters at the White House as former special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker gave a closed-door deposition to several House committees as part of their impeachment inquiry.

What’s the latest on the impeachment effort? House Democrats plan to subpoena the White House for an explanation as to why the United States withheld congressionally appropriated aid to Ukraine before a July 25 phone call in which Trump asked President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the Bidens. As vice president, Joe Biden, now a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, influenced the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating a company with ties to his son Hunter Biden. Meanwhile, the office of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., acknowledged the whistleblower whose complaint sparked the impeachment inquiry went to the committee before taking his or her concerns to the inspector general for the intelligence community. Committee staff members said they redirected the whistleblower to the proper channels and did not review the complaint in advance, an assertion Trump questioned.

Dig deeper: Listen to an interview on The World and Everything In It with Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, on how the impeachment effort could affect both parties.