Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs George Kent on Wednesday directly contradicted one of the key talking points President Trump’s defenders have made on social media for two months. Despite those attempted defenses, Kent said, Trump’s pressure on Ukraine was absolutely not of the same sort that former Vice President Joe Biden used to force the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor seen as corrupt.
Trump, of course, is accused, with plenty of corroboration, of refusing to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky or to release legally mandated U.S. military assistance to Ukraine unless the government announced investigations into Biden. Biden, meanwhile, not only admitted but boasted about conditioning certain loan guarantees to Ukraine on the latter’s firing of prosecutor Viktor Shokin.
In no uncertain terms, Kent said the two situations were not analogous. Before we get to Kent’s specific points, though, let’s first understand that even the forms of U.S. aid at issue in each case were entirely different. Trump held up, almost beyond the statutory deadline, specific military assistance mandated by U.S. public law, duly passed by Congress, and signed by Trump himself. The law did not make the aid contingent on other factors. The aid was imperative.
Biden, though, was using entirely discretionary authority to proactively craft, in conjunction with the International Monetary Fund and other international organizations, loan guarantees from malleable State Department accounts. Indeed, Biden was largely responsible for the loan package being crafted. Congress allowed but in no way required it, much less by formal law. Furthermore, unlike this year’s military assistance, Biden’s package was not a direct, legally mandated appropriation of U.S. taxpayer dollars. It was merely a backstop guarantee for loans intended eventually to be repaid.
In short, Biden had full legal discretion over the loan guarantee, while Trump enjoyed no such discretion. Indeed, legal counsel at both the State Department and the Defense Department advised that it was illegal for Trump to hold up the military assistance.
With that background, let’s assess Kent’s testimony on Wednesday. (Forgive me for paraphrasing without exact quotes, but no transcript is yet available and my personal notes were only in summary form.) Kent explained that Biden’s use of the loan guarantee as a prod to fire Shokin was part of a broad-based policy, both of the United States and of the international community, to eradicate corruption in Ukraine that Shokin was allowing to continue.
The corruption involved the same economic development efforts that were targeted by the loan guarantees. Without the elimination of that systemic corruption, the loan guarantees could be pilfered and wasted. It made perfect sense to refuse to release the aid unless Ukraine had in place a chief prosecutor who would keep corrupt hands off the aid. And, to repeat, the use of loan guarantees as leverage was part of a comprehensive and legitimate effort by the U.S. to force systemic changes on its Ukrainian partners, to the benefit of broad American interests.
None of this was the case with Trump. Trump himself told the press several weeks ago that he could not think of a single broader effort against “corruption” that he had pushed in Ukraine. There is no evidence that he did. Indeed, his administration opposed U.S. assistance intended to help Ukraine fight systemic corruption. Instead, the only supposed corruption Trump ever asked Ukraine to investigate involved two very specific cases involving highly speculative and largely debunked allegations against Trump’s domestic political adversaries.
Kent quite emphatically said Biden’s pressure was an ordinary, wise, and proper part of U.S. diplomacy, but that Trump’s was none of those things. Pressed by his congressional questioner, Kent was even more specific. He said he had never seen a president try to sic a foreign government on U.S. citizens in specific legal cases involving no apparent U.S. law or investigation. And, he said, it was inappropriate for Trump to do so.
Trump was not trying to ensure that U.S. assistance was used effectively, without Ukrainian corruption. Instead, Trump was withholding mandatory U.S. assistance that itself was not threatened by Ukrainian or American corruption, hoping Ukraine could embarrass his own political adversaries.
Biden’s pressure was legitimate. Trump’s was not. Trump’s was, broadly speaking, extortionary. It should not go unpunished.
