Democrats battle to take back the white house . We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world. I am wolf blitzer. Youre in the Situation Room. We are following major breaking news. House democrats drop the hammer, launching a formal Impeachment Inquiry as the outrage over the president s ukraine phone call reaches critical mass. Nancy pelosi making the announcement awhile ago, accusing President Trump of betraying the nation by asking ukraine to help them hurt his potential 2020 opponent, joe biden. Tonight, the president is firing back in familiar fashion, calling the impeachment probe a witch hunt. He failed trying to calm the controversy by releasing transcripts of a phone call tomorrow. All this as the person behind the whistleblower complaint that
set the scandal in motion wants to speak directly with congress. The House Intelligence Committee chairman says that could happen as soon as this week. Our correspondents, analysts, guests are standing biy as w
president and zelensky, we don t know. that was around the time i know and rudy giuliani was pushing out this messaging on joe biden. everybody hold on. want to bring in samantha vinograd. you used to work during the obama administration on the national security council, there were many phone calls that president obama had with world leaders. what was at least then the general procedure about getting a transcript or recording those conversations? wolf, it was a well oiled machine and it started with the situation room connecting the call, staff being on the call for the sole responsibility of taking accurate notes of what was said on the call. typically there were at least two people transcribing so they could compare notes. once that draft transcript was put together, it was shared with the suite, where i used to work, national security adviser office, to go over the draft, see if there were errors.