Washington: The impeachment of President Donald Trump is over, but it's far from case closed on Ukraine. A full accounting of Trump's dealings with Ukraine, stemming in large part from the foreign policy entanglements pursued by personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, remains unfinished despite Trump's acquittal on Wednesday in the Senate.
As the president launches into his re-election campaign, pushing past the charges that threatened his legacy, It’s only a matter of time before fresh details, documents and eyewitnesses emerge, including revelations in a new book from John Bolton, the former national security adviser.
The result could be the start of a prolonged investigation with no clear endpoint, keeping questions about the president's conduct alive through the election in November. It's the kind of prolonged fallout that Trump and his GOP allies sought to avoid as they rejected a lengthy impeachment trial.
“More is going to come out every day, indeed it has come out every day and every week,” said House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff in an interview with the Associated Press. Schiff, the House’s lead impeachment manager, said that no final decisions have been made on whether to subpoena Bolton in the House after the Senate voted not to hear his testimony.
“The president’s basic lack of character, his willingness to cheat in the election — he's not going to stop,” Schiff said.
“It’s not going to change, which means that we are going to have to remain eternally vigilant,” he added.
Giuliani associate Lev Parnas, a Florida businessman who claims to have been working for Trump on Ukraine, has said he is eager to testify before Congress and tell his side of the story. Indicted on campaign finance charges last year, he has been providing documents and messages to impeachment investigators.
Read: Impeachment loses its constitutional gravity in Trump case
Meanwhile, thousands of pages of Ukraine-related documents are slowly emerging in response to Freedom of Information Act lawsuits filed by watchdog groups. The Justice Department disclosed in a court filing last weekend that it has 24 emails related to Ukraine that it has not produced.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged in the minutes after the vote that “the investigations will go on,” adding “that’s sort of what Congress does.” But Republicans said it's time for Congress to move on.
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and one of Trump’s fiercest GOP defenders, said the “the cloud over the presidency has been removed.” But at the same time, he announced that his own committee would continue to investigate Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President Joe Biden who was the target of Trump’s Ukraine push.
Beyond Ukraine, Democrats are expected to revive investigations that they were conducting before Congress in September was first alerted to Trump’s overtures to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
They will likely continue their push to obtain Trump’s taxes, look into his financial dealings and examine his most controversial policies, including child separation at the border. They are also expected to continue to push for legislation passed by the House that would attempt to combat foreign interference in elections, using Trump’s efforts in Ukraine as a touchstone.
Yet Democrats concede that defeating Trump in November is their shot at achieving what impeachment could not.
