On Tuesday evening, September 24, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the House will begin an impeachment inquiry into a whistleblower’s allegations that President Trump abused his office, charging the president with undermining the nation’s security by pressuring a foreign power to dig up dirt on a rival (former Vice President Biden) for his own political gain. Here, Stanford Law Professor David Alan Sklansky, a former federal prosecutor, discusses the pending impeachment inquiry and the whistleblower’s allegations.

Can you walk us through the basis for the Congressional impeachment inquiry? What is the main allegation that House of Representatives is investigating? And why is the inquiry being announced now?

The main allegation is that during a telephone call on July 25 of this year, President Trump pushed Volodymyr Zelensky, the recently elected leader of Ukraine, to pursue a criminal investigation of one of the president’s chief political rivals, former Vice President Biden, and Biden’s son Hunter.

The allegation was the subject of a whistleblower complaint that was filed with the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, Michael Atkinson, in early August. Congress learned about it early this month. On Sept. 13 the House Intelligence Community issued a subpoena for the complaint. This past Wednesday, under mounting pressure, the White House released a summary of the telephone call, and that document seemed to bear out the whistleblower’s allegation. This led to the announcement by the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, of a formal impeachment inquiry.

On Thursday, the day after Pelosi’s announcement, the whistleblower’s complaint was provided to the House Intelligence Committee, which then released it to the public. Legally, what is the most alarming accusation against the president in the complaint?

There are a lot of troubling allegations in the complaint, but the most alarming is the one that had already been reported, and the one the White House summary seems to corroborate. The allegation, to use the words of the whistleblower, is that during the July 25 telephone call the president used “the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.”

It has been reported that the whistleblower complaint also alleges a cover-up.  What is that about?

The whistleblower says that access to records of the July 25 telephone was restricted in order to shield the president from political embarrassment. Specifically, the whistleblower reports that the transcript of the call was moved from the computer system where records of this kind are ordinarily kept to a separate, more secure system usually reserved for highly classified information.

Does the whistleblower report any kind of “quid pro quo”? And does that matter, for purposes of impeachment?

The complaint doesn’t use the words “quid pro quo” or allege that President Trump explicitly linked aid to Ukraine to an investigation of the Bidens. But pressuring a foreign government to investigate a political opponent would be an abuse of power, and thus a potentially impeachable offense, even without a quid pro quo. And the complaint provides plenty of reason to think that there was in fact a quid pro quo, even if Trump didn’t spell it out explicitly. The complaint says that in the months leading up to the July 25 telephone call—in May and June of this year—the president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, pressured Ukraine to investigate the Bidens, and that it was “made clear” to the Ukrainians that Trump would not meet or speak over the phone with Zelensky unless Zelensky showed a willingness to “play ball” on that issue and others. The complaint also reports that in early July the president had suspended military aid to Ukraine—something that Trump himself confirmed earlier this week. The summary of the telephone call that the White House released this past Wednesday indicates that the president said, early in the call, that “we do a lot for Ukraine,” and that “the United States has been very very good to Ukraine,” but that “I wouldn’t say that it’s reciprocal necessarily.” That is shortly before he asks Zelensky to ensure that the Bidens are investigated. And Zelensky, for his part, seems to have been eager to placate Trump. In the call summary released by the White House, Zelensky promises to “work on the investigation of the case,” and he notes that the last time he was in New York he stayed at Trump Tower.

Is it legally significant that the president’s personal lawyer appears to have been involved in discussions with Ukraine and the State Department? And Attorney General William Barr?

The involvement of the president’s personal lawyer as an intermediary with a foreign government is certainly unusual, and it bolsters the impression that the president may have been mixing government business and his own personal objectives. In the call summary released by the White House, President Trump urges Zelensky to follow up both with Giuliani and with Attorney General Barr; he says he will have both of them call Zelensky. That raises obvious questions about the involvement of the Attorney General in improperly pressuring Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.  It also raises questions about Barr’s involvement in the decision the Department of Justice apparently made in August not to share the whistleblower’s complaint with Congress.

Can you say more about that decision—the decision not to share the complaint?  What happened to the whistleblower’s complaint once it was filed, and what was supposed to happen under the law?

Under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act, if a whistleblower working for one of the intelligence agencies wants to bring a matter to the attention of the congressional intelligence committees, he or she is supposed to file a complaint either with the inspector general of the relevant agency or with the Intelligence Community Inspector General, which is what the whistleblower here did. The IG then has 14 days to determine if the complaint is “credible” and raises a matter of “urgent concern,” and if both of those requirements are met, the IG is supposed to pass the complaint along to the relevant agency head or the Director of National Intelligence, who is supposed to pass the complaint along to the congressional intelligence committees.

In this case, the Intelligence Community Inspector General,  Michael Atkinson, determined that the whistleblower’s complaint was in fact credible and did in fact raise a matter of urgent concern. He forwarded the complaint, with those findings, to the Director of National Intelligence, Joseph Maguire. Maguire consulted with the White House and the Department of Justice regarding how to handle the complaint, and based on their advice he decided not to forward it to Congress. Maguire explained in his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee this past Thursday that he took these steps because the complaint was so unusual:  it involved the conduct of the president, rather than the conduct of a member of the intelligence community.

Was Maguire right to consult with the White House and DOJ? And later to withhold the complaint from Congress?

That’s in dispute. His critics on this point, including the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, say that the law clearly required that the complaint be forwarded to Congress, and that it was inappropriate to consult with the White House when the subject of the complaint was the president himself. Democrats in Congress have also raised questions about how DOJ handled the case once it was referred to them—whether, for example, Attorney General Barr should have formally recused himself.

Maguire says that he was in a tough spot, and that he wasn’t sure how the requirements of the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act should apply in the unusual case when the subject of the complaint is the president. He says he consulted with the White House to see if any claim of executive privilege would be raised on behalf of the president.  It wasn’t.

Given that the complaint was deemed “credible” both by the Inspector General and also by Director Maguire in his testimony before Congress this past week, is it significant that the complaint relies on secondhand information?

That’s relevant to how much confidence we should have that the allegations are accurate. But much of what the complaint alleges has already been corroborated, in particular by the summary of the telephone call the White House released on Wednesday. On Friday the White House also seemed to confirm that records of the July 25 telephone call had been moved to a separate, more secure computer system in order to restrict access.

The whistle-blower is, reportedly, a CIA analyst. Is that significant?

Again, it may affect how much confidence should be placed in the accuracy of the allegations. If the whistleblower is a CIA analyst it makes the allegations more credible.

What are the next steps?

The House Intelligence Committee is planning to begin hearings next week on the whistleblower’s complaint. The committee is also trying to arrange an interview with the whistleblower. The whistleblower apparently is awaiting legal guidance from Maguire’s office regarding what information the whistleblower may share with Congress.

David Alan Sklansky is the Stanley Morrison Professor of Law and Faculty Co-Directory of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center. He is the author of Democracy and the Police (Stanford University Press 2008), and he writes regularly about criminal procedure and law enforcement.