With public impeachment hearings set to begin, why are Republicans now so obsessed with the whistleblower?

Democrats have said testimony from whoever flagged the Ukraine call is now ‘redundant’ – but the GOP think they can use it to their advantage, says Chris Stevenson

Democrats want evidence of the president engineering interference in next year's election (Getty)

For a time in September and October, the whistleblower who flagged their concerns about a July call between Donald Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky found themselves at the centre of what has become a rapidly evolving, Democrat-led impeachment inquiry.

This was what many Democrats in congress had been waiting for, apparent evidence of the US president calling on another nation’s leader to interfere in the 2020 election by asking him to investigate the family of a political rival in Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden. Trump took the option to release a memo containing some record of the call, saying he had nothing to hide. However, the memo is not as clear cut as he believes.

During the past six weeks, more than half a dozen officials connected to the Trump administration have testified behind closed doors about their view of the Ukraine policy. More than 2,600 pages of that testimony have now been released – painting a picture of how controversial policy over Ukraine has become within the administration. Some officials have said actions including withholding military aid to Kiev amounted to a quid pro quo, with it bringing an expectation that Ukrainian prosecutors would look into Biden’s conduct as vice-president regarding the country or his son Hunter’s position on the board of a Ukrainian company. There is no suggestion either man has done anything wrong.