What We Know and Don’t About the Trump-Ukraine Affair

But Mr. Maguire refused to share the complaint with Congress, saying the Justice Department disagreed with the inspector general’s conclusion that its subject matter was covered under the law that requires disclosing such complaints to Congress. The issue came into the open when the House Intelligence Committee chairman, Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, sent an angry letter to Mr. Maguire on Sept. 10, accusing him of violating the law.

Mr. Maguire relented as the impeachment inquiry came into focus. He was expected to release a redacted version of the complaint in coming days, people familiar with the situation said late on Tuesday. Administration officials were also said to be working on a deal to allow the whistle-blower to file the complaint to congressional investigators.

Mr. Maguire is set to testify about the matter on Thursday.

The complaint’s full details remain a mystery, as does the whistle-blower’s identity. Because Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani have openly acknowledged pressuring Ukraine about “corruption” and the Bidens, it is not clear how much the complaint involves that is not already in plain view.

But in a closed-door briefing with the House Intelligence Committee, the inspector general for the intelligence community, Michael Atkinson, said that the complaint involved multiple actions, according to two officials familiar with his briefing, suggesting that the matter goes beyond Mr. Trump’s July phone call.

The president insists that he has been unfairly accused, saying — without offering evidence — that the whistle-blower is “partisan” and that Democrats and the news media are initiating a new “witch hunt” against him. Mr. Trump has also said that he is aware that his conversations with foreign leaders are monitored by numerous government officials and that he would not incriminate himself so easily.

Mr. Giuliani has communicated with Ukrainian officials for months about the Bidens. He has also pressed them about the circumstances of the 2016 disclosures of payments earmarked by a Russia-aligned Ukrainian political party to Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman, who is in federal prison on convictions related to his Ukrainian political work. Mr. Giuliani has sought information about both subjects and traveled to Madrid this summer for a meeting with one of Mr. Zelensky’s top aides, whom he urged to investigate the matters.

In May, Mr. Giuliani told The New York Times that he was pushing Ukraine to investigate the Bidens “because that information will be very, very helpful to my client, and may turn out to be helpful to my government.”

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