Juliette Kayyem: How One Whistleblower Leads To An Impeachment Inquiry

President Trump Holds News Conference In New York As World Leaders Gather In NYC For United Nations General Assembly — U.S. President Donald Trump holds a press conference on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly on September 25, 2019 in New York City. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced yesterday that the House will launch a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump.

Hannah Uebele is a producer for Under the Radar with Callie Crossley and previously worked as associate producer for Boston Public Radio. She graduated from Tufts University with a B.S. in English and Environmental Studies. She's a proud Delawarean but has found herself saying "wicked" more and more often, so the Bostonian metamorphosis is well underway.Contact: hannah_uebele@wgbh.org

September 25, 2019

Updated August 07, 2023

The White House released a memorandum on Wednesday of the phone call President Donald Trump had on July 25 with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. While the memo is not a verbatim transcript, it shows that Trump pushed Zelensky to begin a corruption investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden.

Homeland security expert Juliette Kayyem joined Boston Public Radio on Wednesday to speak about the memo and whistleblower complaint.

"The White House clearly is freaking out since they released this and not the whistle-blower account," Kayyem said. "I''ve got to believe that the whistleblower account — which they clearly don't want people to see — has got to be so much worse, possibly where the exact language of a quid pro quo is."

Kayyem remarked how no one would have known about this phone call, which has led to an impeachment inquiry, if not for the whistleblower. "The [White House] has been mapping this out a long time, and if not for a single whistleblower, we wouldn't have known anything about it."

Kayyem is an analyst for CNN, former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security and faculty chair of the homeland security program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.