Donald Trump and his top aides inside the White House were privately concerned that GOP allies would turn against the former president during his first impeachment trial once they had learned “the full extent” of what he did in Ukraine, according to a forthcoming book.
After it was reported that Trump had pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate top Democrats in exchange for military aid, the White House tried to get ahead of the story by releasing few details in an attempt to maintain Republican support, according to the book Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump. As a result, the White House released a copy of the transcript documenting Trump and Zelensky’s phone call — a call the former president had repeatedly insisted was “perfect.”
PELOSI PRIORITIZED POLITICS OVER THOROUGH INVESTIGATION IN TRUMP’S FIRST IMPEACHMENT: BOOK
“[The White House] had devised a plan: His aides would sell their top Hill surrogates on the transcript — but deliberately hold back the more damaging allegations in the whistleblower report, which documented how Trump systematically targeted Ukraine over several months to exact political favors, including possibly leveraging U.S. military assistance,” wrote journalists Rachael Bade and Karoun Demirjian. “If they could corner lawmakers into publicly defending Trump’s call with Zelensky, they believed … GOP lawmakers would be less likely to break with the White House when the full story came out.”
The phone call in question became the focal point of Trump’s first impeachment trial in late 2019, with Democrats pointing to the former president’s request for political dirt on then-presidential candidate Joe Biden as a quid pro quo. Trump’s efforts appear to have been successful as few Republicans broke with the former president, with all GOP House members voting no on impeachment and only Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) breaking party lines to vote in favor of convicting Trump.
The House voted to impeach Trump on Dec. 18, 2019, on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. He was later acquitted by the Senate.
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Democrats knew it would be difficult to convince Republicans to vote in favor of Trump’s impeachment, especially on a fast-tracked timeline. However, they pressed ahead, believing the charges would influence the public to vote him out in 2020, according to the book.
Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump is scheduled to be released on Tuesday.
