In the midst of his now-released testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, former diplomat Kurt Volker confirmed a key point about the impropriety of aspects of President Trump’s pressure on Ukraine’s government.
A column of mine six weeks ago explored this key consideration. In sum, it involves the crucial difference between: 1) asking a foreign government to help garner facts relevant to a specific, current U.S. investigation and 2) asking a foreign government to target a U.S. citizen, under its own laws, even though the American is under no U.S. investigation and not alleged to have committed any specific U.S. crime.
The first is standard operating procedure and entirely proper. The second is clearly inappropriate. Indeed, it is so inappropriate that Volker declined to fulfill the implicit directive to do so.
The testimony on this point was illuminating. Volker said Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani was, at Trump’s direction, pushing hard for the Ukrainian president to issue a statement that Ukraine would conduct the two investigations Trump desired. As is well-known, Trump wanted one investigation into a debunked conspiracy theory involving alleged Ukrainian housing of a computer server of the Democratic Party and another into the Biden family while former Vice President Joe Biden substantially led Trump in general election polls.
Volker said he would not have objected to a request that Ukraine commit broadly to fighting corruption. Yet when it came to two investigations involving U.S. citizens, especially Trump’s political rivals, Volker demanded to know if the U.S. Justice Department “had requested an official investigation.” Once an aide informed him that “we never had” done so, “because of that [it] was another factor in my advising the Ukrainians not to put [reference to such investigations] in” to the proposed presidential statement.
Volker testified, “[The Ukrainian official] said, I think quite appropriately, that if they are responding to an official request, that’s one thing. If there’s no official request, that’s different. And I agree with that. … And my comment back to him was I think those are good reasons. And in addition, I just think it’s important that you avoid anything that would look like it would play into our domestic politics, and this could. So just don’t do it.”
In the end, largely because Volker’s long experience (beginning under other Republican presidents) taught him that such a demand would be improper, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky never made the statement Giuliani wanted. Without specific references to the server investigation and the Biden investigation, Giuliani (and apparently Trump) had no interest in a pledge from Ukraine to fight broader issues of corruption. They were solely focused on looking into their Democratic rivals.
In other testimony released today, Ambassador Gordon Sondland, seen as far more eager to defend Trump, also admitted that Trump should not request an investigation into the Bidens. Sondland told the House committee it would be “improper” and “insidious” to ask a foreign government to legally target a political rival. Further pressed as to whether it would also be “illegal,” Sondland said, “I’m not a lawyer, but I assume so. … It doesn’t sound good.”
The reason it doesn’t sound good is because it is quite bad. If the only alleged corruption a president cares about is fully or largely debunked theories about what his own political rivals did, and if no U.S. investigation on it is taking place, then the “ask” alone, even without a quid pro quo, is extremely problematic.
The Bidens might be ethically sleazy. Even if so, it doesn’t excuse Trump’s extralegal means of asking foreigners to portray mere sleaze as something actually illegal.
