Let's dissect the newest:
Back when Barack Obama was the president, The United States government had some concerns about a culture of corruption in Ukraine at a time when we were assisting them with loan guarantees. They needed cash to fund their defense against Russian aggression in the eastern districts of the country. One of the officials whom we determined was egregiously corrupt was the chief government prosecutor, Viktor Shokin. The United States, as well as other NATO nations, pressured the Ukrainian president to remove Shokin. At one point Vice President Biden was dispatched to Kiev to give the president the message that if Shokin was not fired, then the $1 Billion in loan guarantees would be withdrawn. Shokin was canned.
At the same time Hunter Biden, Vice President Biden's son, was on the board of a Ukrainian company. Trump and his team are alleging that Shokin was investigating Hunter Biden and his company and that Joe Biden used his position to stop the investigation of his son. There are conflicting reports regarding whether Biden was under investigation by Shokin. Adam Entous, who has written extensively on Hunter Biden, told NPR that his interviews with Ukrainian officials revealed that no investigation was taking place. Another prosecutor, however, did investigate Biden and his company and found no illegalities or ethical issues. Furthermore, there has never been any suggestion that Vice President Biden used his position to help his son, either in the case of the investigation or in any other circumstance. Hunter Biden eventually resigned from the Ukrainian company.
Fast forward to 2019. Joe Biden has decided to run for the Democratic presidential nomination and is polling ahead of the other Democrats, but also ahead of Trump in a hypothetical head-to-head general election contest. Trump has devoted a fair amount of Twitter time to attacking Biden, hanging the nickname "Sleepy Joe" on him. Just last week the Congress was informed by the Inspector General of the combined intelligence agencies that there was a whistle-blower complaint that he found credible and of "urgent concern". The Acting Director of National Intelligence prohibited him from forwarding the actual complaint to Congress. The media soon reported that the complaint involved the president. Soon after it came out that it involved the president asking Ukraine to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden.
At first Trump denied that his call with the Ukrainian president was anything but routine, but soon, Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, both confirmed that both Trump and Giuliani asked the Ukrainians to open a corruption investigation into the Bidens. As of this writing Trump is attacking the whistle-blower as partisan, a member of the "Deep State", and the complaint a partisan Democratic hack-job and a new witch hunt, all the while admitting to the basic facts. He is insisting that the "real" story is not that he is asking for foreign assistance in taking down a potential election opponent, but that he cares deeply about corruption and that Biden is the one who used his position for corrupt purposes. The actual rationale is hard to follow, because, as usual, Trump is quite incoherent when not using a TelePrompter.
Trump's assertions are nonsense on their face. Nobody seriously believes that Trump cares about corruption, especially not in Ukraine. Nobody seriously believes that this would have come up if Biden wasn't doing so well in the polls. (If the polls are all fake, why the concern?) Only an idiot would believe that this was anything than what it appears to be: the President of the United States recruiting the assistance of a foreign government in order to influence another election.
The Mueller Report found no clear coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and the campaign's actions did not rise to the level of conspiracy, but the report was clear that Russia offered help and Trump and his campaign were happy to accept that help. In the aftermath of the release of the report Trump said that if offered foreign help in 2020 he would at least look at it. Now we have a brazen attempt, first in secret, but now in broad daylight, to actively coordinate with a foreign government to influence the election by casting a dark cloud over the front running challenger.
Does he literally have to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in order for Congress to remove him from office?
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