Critics of President Trump are trying to lump together a story that he asked the Australian prime minister to assist Attorney General William Barr’s inquiry into the origins of the Robert Mueller investigation with his decision to ask Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to look into Joe and Hunter Biden. But this is a mistake. The episodes are different from each other in two important ways.
The first important difference is that Trump asked Zelensky to “look into” Biden, a leading political rival, for something that is not under investigation in the United States. In contrast, Barr has been quite open about the fact that the Department of Justice has been looking into the origins of the Russia investigation. Due to the international nature of what is being looked at, that investigation requires the cooperation of multiple foreign governments. Though we do not have a transcript of the Australia call, it would be perfectly appropriate for Trump to make sure that Barr gets all the cooperation he needs overseas to conduct a thorough investigation.
