I have received information from multiple U.S. government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 US election.

This interference includes, among other things,

pressuring a foreign country to investigate

one of the president's main domestic political rivals.

The president's personal lawyer, Mr. Rudolph Giuliani, is a

central figure in this effort. So begins the whistleblower complaint that sparked

the impeachment of Donald Trump.

When Ambassador Bill Taylor kicked off these impeachment hearings earlier this month, he described

this pressure campaign as the outgrowth of a shadow diplomacy, an irregular channel of political appointees and

outside associates including Giuliani who had direct access to the president.

One of those appointees, the lynchpin of the scheme, was EU Ambassador Gordon Sunland.

In his climactic Wednesday testimony, Sunland confessed that he and the so-called

three amigos had worked with Giuliani to execute

Trump's plan. I know that members of this committee frequently frame these

complicated issues in the form of a simple question. Was there a quid pro quo as I testified previously with regard to the requested White House call and the White House meeting, the answer is yes.

But that wasn't all he said.

He also took issue with Taylor's characterization of the Shakedown itself.

This wasn't a quote unquote irregular channel he insisted. There was nothing irregular about it.

It wasn't just him. It was everybody. The suggestion that we were engaged in some irregular or rogue diplomacy is absolutely

false.

I have now identified certain State Department emails and messages that provide contemporaneous support

for my view.

...