Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham argued that the Trump administration is too dysfunctional to deliver a quid pro quo message to Ukraine.
Graham, a staunch defender of President Trump as he faces impeachment, called the administration’s policy toward Ukraine “incoherent” because witnesses have differed on whether there was a quid pro quo.
House Democrats are seeking to determine whether Trump made military aide to Ukraine conditional on an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who was on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.
“I’ve read the transcript for myself,” Graham said of Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“I made up my own mind. [Kurt] Volker, the special envoy, said there was no quid pro quo. [U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon] Sondland has changed his testimony to say he presumed there was. What I can tell you about the Trump policy toward the Ukraine, it was incoherent. It depends on who you talk to. They seem to be incapable of forming a quid pro quo,” Graham said.
“I find the whole process to be a sham and I’m not going to legitimize it.”
“It was incoherent,” Sen @LindseyGrahamSC
says of Trump’s Ukraine policy.“They seem to be *incapable* of forming a quid pro quo.” pic.twitter.com/rdZxyIazNj
— Steven Portnoy (@stevenportnoy) November 6, 2019
Volker, the former special envoy to Ukraine, told lawmakers in closed-door testimony that he did not see any proof that Trump dangled aide in exchange for an investigation into his political rival.
Sondland amended his testimony, saying he remembers delivering a quid pro quo message to Ukraine.
Graham’s defense of Trump echoes that made by the president’s 2016 campaign about whether it colluded with Russia to win the election. Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, told a group of congressional interns during special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation that the campaign could not have colluded with Russia because it was too disorganized.
