It goes back to when Biden was VP. His son, Hunter Biden, was being paid an exorbitant amount by a Ukrainian natural gas firm, Burisma, in spite of the fact that he has no expertise in the industry. It was basically payola for the Biden family in exchange for influence. Soft corruption.
There was a Ukrainian prosecutor who thought Burisma was into some shady stuff, and started an investigation into the firm. Biden's story is that the prosecutor was corrupt, but I've seen no evidence of that. Biden had the Obama administration withhold $1,000,000,000 of loan guarantees from Ukraine until the Ukrainian president fired the prosecutor who was investigating Burisma. He did, and got the money.
Trump thought that that shit was shady and asked the new president of Ukraine to have a prosecutor reopen the investigation. Trump, being a retard, mentioned Joe Biden by name in the phone call, IIRC. None of this would have happened if he had just asked him to reopen the investigation into Burisma and not mentioned Biden. Also, Trump didn't mention the military aid in the phone call, but I think some of his representative like Guiliani might have behind the scenes.
Even if that's the case, it's basically the same thing Biden did with the loan guarantees: he wanted to manipulate an investigation in Ukraine by withholding U.S. aid.
Basically, it depends on your perspective. Either Trump asked Ukraine to dig up dirt on his political opponent to interfere with an election, or he asked Ukraine to reopen an investigation that dates back to before Biden was even a presidential candidate, which, yes, might reveal some bad stuff about someone who happens to be running for president now.
That's the basis of one of the article of impeachment, which they're calling "Abuse of Power."
The other article of impeachment stems from the fact that Trump didn't cooperate with the House impeachment investigation.
(cont'd)