Pelosi promises to start 'a whole new stage of investigation' into Trump admin over whistleblower accusations involving Biden's son and Ukraine

Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has threatened to open "a whole new stage of investigation" into President Donald Trump if Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire does not give congress the "full complaint" of the whistleblower who claimed that Trump tried to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden's son, Hunter.

What about Biden?

Hunter Biden used to sit on the board of directors for a Ukranian natural gas firm called Burisma Holdings, a position for which he was paid $50,000 per month. Burisma is owned by a Russian oligarch named Mykola Zlochevsky, who has been accused of both tax evasion and money laundering.

Joe Biden (joined by some additional members of the Obama administration) pressured the Ukrainian Parliament to remove Victor Shokin, Ukraine's prosecutor general who reportedly worried Zlochevsky. Since Shokin was also reported to be notoriously corrupt, other Western governments had also been hoping to see him removed from his role.

Shokin's replacement, Yuriy Lutsenko, initially seemed to take a hardline stance against Burisma, but then closed the case against the firm less than a year after becoming prosecutor general.

Biden openly boasted of orchestrating the firing of Shokin by making it a condition of a billion dollar loan from the United States to Ukraine. He has also claimed that he had never talked with his son about Burisma.

What did the whistleblower say?

An anonymous whistleblower from within the U.S. government has claimed that Trump secretly asked the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to help Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani into investigating Hunter Biden.

While some of the information about what was in the whistleblower's complaint has been leaked, DNI Maguire has not allowed Congress to see it in full.

The current inspector general for the U.S. Intelligence Community, Michael Atkinson, told Maguire that he believed the whistleblower's complaint qualified as an "urgent concern." Maguire, however, disagreed.

The Trump administration has told Maguire not to turn over the complaint to the House Intelligence Committee.

In a tweet on Friday, Trump admitted to talking with the foreign leader from the complaint (without mentioning Zelensky or Ukraine by name), but insisted that it was a "perfectly fine and respectful conversation" and that "there was nothing said wrong, it was pitch perfect!"

What did Pelosi say now?

On Sunday, Pelosi released a letter to all members of Congress, saying that she expects Maguire "to obey the law and turn over the whistleblower's full complaint to" the House Intelligence Committee when he testifies before it on Thursday.

Pelosi accused the Trump administration of violating a federal statute by preventing Maguire from giving the complaint to Congress.

"If the Administration persists in blocking this whistleblower from disclosing to Congress a serious possible breach of constitutional duties by the President," she wrote, "they will be entering a grave new chapter of lawlessness which will take us into a whole new stage of investigation."

She ended the letter with "[t]hank you for your patriotism."