With regard to the quid and the several examples of quo involved in President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, they were all part of the same package. Nobody should fall for the new White House spin trying to make a distinction between tying military aid to an investigation of a Democratic computer server and tying it to an investigation of the Bidens.
Neither element is acceptable. But both are merely two sides of the same coin.
Even without a quid pro quo, the very act of a president encouraging a foreign government to investigate U.S. citizens not under U.S. investigation, especially when that U.S. target is a political rival, is impeachable conduct. All the more so, then, for an actual quid pro quo involving congressionally approved military assistance. This should turn the impeachability into a slam dunk for actual eviction from office.
With regard to Ukraine, that key but troubled ally wanted two things from Trump: a meeting between the two nations’ presidents and the military assistance that Congress already had overwhelmingly approved and Trump had signed into law. Trump, openly and repeatedly working through his “personal attorney,” Rudy Giuliani, also wanted two things. First, he wanted an investigation into the loony theory that there still is some incriminating evidence on former Democratic National Committee servers and that the servers were owned by corrupt Ukrainians. Second, he wanted Ukraine to investigate the Ukraine-related activities of the Bidens, father and son.
The former obsession of Trump and Giuliani has been described by virtually every objective observer, including the news pages of both this publication and the Wall Street Journal, as a “debunked conspiracy theory.” Trump’s own former national security adviser, Tom Bossert, repeatedly told Trump as much. Nonetheless, it appeared to be part of an immutable desire of Trump to punish Democrats for the prior campaign and hobble their seemingly strongest candidate, Biden, for the coming election.
Remember, Giuliani has fiercely insisted he was acting as Trump’s personal attorney, so this clearly was more a personal/political interest of Trump’s than a legitimate policy interest carried out by government officials. In the dozens upon dozens of print and televised reports I’ve seen on all this, I can’t remember a single one in which Giuliani himself stressed the 2016 server issue over the Biden issue. He was pushing both, and with all he was worth.
There is plenty of evidence that the two probes were a package deal, and that the deal was directed by Trump, personally.
First, when Trump immediately responded to the Ukrainian president’s mention of desired military aid with his request for “a favor,” he began with the “server” issue but then moved seamlessly, as if part of the same general thought pattern, into his request for an investigation into the Bidens. Second, Ambassador Gordon Sondland testified that while working on arranging the desired meeting between the two presidents, Trump explicitly told him to consult with and satisfy Giuliani, which, by the way, means making U.S. policy the handmaiden of a private lawyer. Despite his misgivings, that’s what Sondland did. And Giuliani explicitly said the meeting should be dependent on “the 2016 election (including the DNC server) and Burisma,” the company on which board Hunter Biden sat.
Numerous other officials, including Ambassador Bill Taylor, reportedly have said they were operating under the assumption that the aid or the meeting was directly tied to Trump’s desire for these investigations. The assistance was indeed withheld for months, and the meeting was indeed delayed for weeks.
So, to review: Trump specifically mentioned both probes within mere minutes, immediately after the request for military aid was mentioned, Trump repeatedly told officials to defer to Giuliani, and Giuliani repeatedly pressed Ukraine, and told others to press Ukraine, for both probes while saying the Ukrainian desires shouldn’t be met unless the probes were promised.
And now Trump’s chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, says there indeed were quid and quo with regard to the debunked server issue, and that mixing politics with foreign policy is normal. We have a Department of Justice official saying, “If the White House was withholding aid in regards to the cooperation of any investigation at the Department of Justice, that is news to us.”
There was no legitimate investigation into Ukrainian involvement into the servers, and no U.S. investigation into the Bidens at all.
None of this was acceptable behavior by the president. No quid pro quo, for either reason, was remotely appropriate. As Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said on Thursday: “You don’t hold up foreign aid that we had previously appropriated for a political initiative. Period.”
Exactly.
