It’s not just about a phone call. The phone call was merely
what caught the attention of a concerned staff member who subsequently filed a
complaint.
Before the phone call, Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, was gallivanting around Ukraine,
trying to dig up dirt on Joe Biden and trying to get the United States
Ambassador to Ukraine fired. Giuliani, at Trump’s direction, was undermining Department
of State officials. Everyone involved, from the Ambassador to the European
Union, to the replacement for the fired Ambassador to Ukraine, to career State
Department officials knew two things: that the president of Ukraine wanted
military aid and a meeting at the
White House with Trump and that Trump wanted an investigation, or at
least the announcement of an investigation, into Joe Biden and his son Hunter
Biden. Despite out-of-context quotes indicating assumptions, presumptions and
speculations, everyone involved told the same, or at least complementary,
stories about what was going on. This is the context in which the supposedly
perfect phone call took place.
The phone call in which, after President Zelensky thanked
Trump for his assistance, including the $391 billion that had been allocated by
Congress, Trump immediately responded with “…but we’d like you to do us a favor
though”. The word “though” indicates that there are conditions, and the
conditions are twofold: look into the location of the DNC server and start an
investigation of Burisma and the Bidens. And
Trump suggested that Zelensky talkto, not only Attorney General Barr, but Rudy “The
Human Hand Grenade” Giuliani.
The first condition is very telling. During the 2016 election
campaign the DNC server was hacked by elements of Russian Intelligence. A
private company, Crowdstrike, conducted forensic analysis that was later
utilized by the FBI in their investigation of the hack. In order to conduct investigations of this kind, it is not
necessary to physically remove the server from the premises. However, a
conspiracy theory circulated that the DNC refused to “turn over” the server to
the FBI (even though the FBI never asked them to and didn’t need them to) and
that the server itself was spirited away to Ukraine. This was part of a larger
conspiracy theory that it wasn’t Russia that hacked the server and interfered
with our election, but Ukraine, who then tried to frame Russia. Giuliani pushed
this nonsense on Trump. Trump, who ignores the advice and analysis of experts
and listens to whatever crackpot nonsense his friends tell him, internalized
this and formed an opinion that Ukrainian politicians were all corrupt (one of
his favorite words) and “bad people”. There is some truth in that – Ukraine’s
government had been notoriously corrupt, but had been certified recently by the
Department of Defense to have made sufficient progress to be able to receive
lethal military aid.
During the Obama Administration, there was an effort to tie
aid to Ukraine to rooting out government corruption. This was supported by our
European allies and was official American policy. Joe Biden was made the “point
man” in this effort. At the same time, Biden’s son Hunter was given a position
on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company. An investigation into
Burisma had begun, but was abandoned by the Ukrainian Chief Prosecutor. This
prosecutor was widely seen as corrupt, and it was his refusal to investigate
bribery and corruption that fueled the effort to have him removed. Vice
President Biden put pressure on the president of Ukraine to fire the prosecutor,
who only did so when Biden threatened to withhold an aid package. A video
circulates of Biden bragging about accomplishing this. In the aftermath of the
firing, the new prosecutor did
investigate Burisma and found no evidence of any wrongdoing by anyone at
Burisma, including Hunter Biden. At the time there was concern within the Obama
administration about the appearance of impropriety, Hunter Biden landing a plum
job in Ukraine while his father, the Vice President was tasked with addressing
Ukrainian corruption. However, the decision was made to take no action. At the
time Republicans held majorities in both houses of Congress, yet no
investigation was opened, even though Congressional Republicans showed no
hesitancy in conducting multiple overlapping investigations in things like
Benghazi. Why Benghazi, but not the Bidens in Ukraine? The big difference was
that Clinton was running for president and Biden was not.
One of the Trump legal team’s defenses is that the president
has a duty to investigate corruption and make any aid contingent upon rooting
it out in nations that we supply with financial or military assistance. Trump,
prior to Joe Biden’s announcement that he was running for president, showed no
interest in eliminating corruption anywhere.
In fact, Trump rarely shows any interest in anything
unless it benefits him personally, or he has been lobbied about it. The
conspiracy theories about Ukraine, coupled with the opportunity to smear a
potential electoral rival, appears to be the only thing that piqued Trump’s interest
in Ukraine. It’s also telling that the only
alleged corruption in Ukraine that Trump is focused on is that of the Bidens.
A second line of defense from Trump’s team is that the
investigation never happened, and the aid was released ahead of schedule. Much
is being made of the supposed schedule for releasing the aid package. But the
aid should have been released
months before, when it had been allocated. No reason was given for the delay
and it has recently been revealed that delaying the aid was illegal. The “deadline”
was the end of the fiscal year. If the aid had not been released before then,
it would have been lost and Ukraine would not have received it. In fact, it was
released, not ahead of, but well behind schedule. Would an investigation have
happened if Trump had not been caught by the whistle-blower’s complaint? If
not, would the aid have been permanently lost? A related argument is to point
out that Zelensky really had met with Trump, that somehow a photo op at the
United Nations satisfied the request for a White House meeting.
None of this has been debunked by Trump’s legal team,
although they continue to claim that the House’s case has been “destroyed”. The
supposed debunking has been thoroughly debunked.
The rest of the legal team’s defense has been procedural. There
was no due process, even though Trump blocked many witnesses and refused to
participate. The House Impeachment committee had no authority to subpoena or
otherwise call witnesses, so it was illegitimate. It should have been the
Judiciary Committee, not the Intelligence Committee, which conducted the initial
hearing, so it was legitimate. Republicans were locked out of the initial
hearings (they weren’t). Impeachment and removal requires an actual statutory
crime (it doesn’t).
And now we have the spectacle of John’s Bolton’s manuscript
being leaked. They moaned and groaned about no firsthand witnesses, even though
they blocked them all. Now we
have a firsthand witness, who not only says he will testify if subpoenaed, but
we know what he will say, now
that firsthand witness is not credible. Pretty convenient argument.
The facts are not in dispute. The explanations and rationales
are ridiculous.
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