The Trump Impeachment Inquiry

[HurricaneDitka]

@YamatoTwinkie

I agree that Trump did not blatantly ask for evidence to be manufactured, however defense funds were held up, and importantly, the Ukrainians knew funds were being held up. It is not a huge leap of logic to assume that the Ukrainians may have deduced (rightly or wrongly) that Trump wasn’t particularly interested in a fair and impartial investigation leading to a complete exoneration of the Bidens, and may have been much more inclined to tell him what he wanted to hear - namely every little piece of dirt that they managed to dig up, even from questionable sourcing methods.

As I’ve said previously, the best argument that you can make is that a quid pro quo was not overt. Given the context of the withheld funds, and the call mentioning a “not reciprocal” relationship between the US and the Ukraine, and the request for favors, its easy to make a case for an heavily-implied quid pro quo, and arguing otherwise is about as ridiculous as claiming that the mob-boss asking his subordinate to ensure that the local District Attorney “sleeps with the fishes” was really meant as a request to give him a nice aquarium as a gift.

(emphasis mine)

What’s your source for the highlighted bit? I’ve seen the opposite reported.

[Euphonious_Polemic]

@HurricaneDitka

(emphasis mine)

What’s your source for the highlighted bit? I’ve seen the opposite reported.

How on earth would they not know? It was public knowledge.

"The Trump administration initially told Congress it was releasing the aid to Ukraine on February 28. It repeated that assertion to Congress again on May 23, but failed to explain to lawmakers but struggled to explain — both publicly and to the lawmakers who approved the aid — exactly why the funds were withheld.

Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell couldn’t get a straight answer from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark Esper over the summer on why the aid hadn’t been dispersed yet.

But then on September 11, the Trump administration suddenly disbursed the money.

So what changed? It’s not entirely clear."

[bobot]

Even without a quid pro quo (which there was) the request to have a foreign government investigate an American is impeachable, and a damn shitty thing for any so-called red-blooded American to do.

[Euphonious_Polemic]

And tell me - you can see the quid pro quo now, correct?

“I need this aid”
“I want some favors first”

You can see this, right?

[gytalf2000]

@JohnT

LOL, the guy literally asked China, on TV, to look into Hunter Biden’s Ukranian activities. If that’s not “manufacturing dirt”, I literally have no idea what is.

Yeah, the intent is clear as a bell. How can anybody deny it? We are truly living in crazy times.

[HurricaneDitka]

@bobot

Even without a quid pro quo (which there was) the request to have a foreign government investigate an American is impeachable, and a damn shitty thing for any so-called red-blooded American to do.

Congress could impeach the President for wearing the wrong color tie. Saying something is “impeachable” is meaningless. I’d be interested to know if you thought it was a crime, and if so, which one, specifically.

[bobot]

It was a high crime and misdemeanor all rolled up into one.

[HurricaneDitka]

@Euphonious_Polemic

And tell me - you can see the quid pro quo now, correct?

“I need this aid”
“I want some favors first”

You can see this, right?

You’re still misquoting him. And no, I don’t “see the quid pro quo now”. I see why you think it’s implied, but I don’t find your assumptions / summaries there convincing (or accurate). If we can both agree, as YamatoTwinkie does, that no quid pro quo is overtly stated, I’m content to leave you with your own interpretation of what might be implied. It is not one shared by me though.

[HurricaneDitka]

@bobot

It was a high crime and misdemeanor all rolled up into one.

Was it any specific crime though, or is this just you restating that it’s “impeachable” with a different word choice?

[bobot]

Maybe we could have some foreign government look into it and get back to us.

[steronz]

@MulderMuffin

I’m on the fence about the “manufacturer dirt” part. Maybe Trump expected it, maybe not. So far all of the testimony leaks I’ve read about seem to point to his desire for Ukraine to publicly announce an investigation, something Trump could point to and shout, “Ah ha! See! He’s being investigated!” He could have wanted any evidence, regardless of the truth of that evidence. Probably did. But I don’t think it’s quite a given yet. There’s plenty of evidence about the quid pro quo, though, and lots of other shady stuff.

I mean, you either believe that this years old “scandal” wasn’t being investigated due to corruption, or you believe it wasn’t being investigated because there wasn’t enough evidence to even launch an investigation. If you believe the former, you’re probably a Republican and you think Trump was just doing right by America. If you believe the latter, there’s really no reason to think evidence wouldn’t have to be manufactured to satisfy Trump’s demands.

[Aspenglow]

@HurricaneDitka

Was it any specific crime though, or is this just you restating that it’s “impeachable” with a different word choice?

The “quid” is the crime. No “pro quo” required. Trump committed a crime when he solicited the favor from a foreign national.

The crime is set forth in U.S. Code § 30121.

[Moriarty]

@HurricaneDitka

Congress could impeach the President for wearing the wrong color tie. Saying something is “impeachable” is meaningless. I’d be interested to know if you thought it was a crime, and if so, which one, specifically.

To put your mind at ease, there doesn’t have to be a quid pro quo for there to be a crime. Solicitation is also criminal, meaning that the other side does not have to play ball in order for a law to be broken. Here, the President was illegally seeking foreign assistance.

Let’s see…

@52 USC 30121

(a)Prohibition
**It shall be unlawful for— **
(1)a foreign national, directly or indirectly, to make—
(A)a contribution or donation of money or other thing of value, or to make an express or implied promise to make a contribution or donation, in connection with a Federal, State, or local election;
(B)a contribution or donation to a committee of a political party; or
(C)an expenditure, independent expenditure, or disbursement for an electioneering communication (within the meaning of section 30104(f)(3) of this title); or

(2)a person to solicit, accept, or receive a contribution or donation described in subparagraph (A) or (B) of paragraph (1) from a foreign national.

(My emphasis)

ETA: Happily Ninja’d!

[YamatoTwinkie]

@HurricaneDitka

(emphasis mine)

What’s your source for the highlighted bit? I’ve seen the opposite reported.

Appreciate the article and correction. However, regardless of whether the Ukrainians actually knew the official reason for the freeze, they still would’ve known that the funds were not presently in their bank account at that moment in time, and importantly, Trump would have known this too.

[ThelmaLou]

Why do you people continue to engage with HD?

[QuickSilver]

@ThelmaLou

Why do you people continue to engage with HD?

Because up with this we will not put.

[HurricaneDitka]

Moriarty (and Aspenglow),

Thanks for the responses. I don’t find the claim very convincing, but I’d be curious to hear some of your additional thoughts. For starters, here’s an NPR story on the subject:

… Did the president’s requests violate campaign finance law?

The Department of Justice doesn’t think so. DOJ officials and career prosecutors in the department’s public integrity section examined the text of the July 25 phone call and concluded there was not a potential campaign finance violation, according to senior Justice Department officials. The facts did not provide a basis for a predicated investigation, they said.

…

Fischer at the Campaign Legal Center isn’t sure that even if there were a quorum, the FEC would act. The alleged violation, he says, “arose in the course of the president carrying out his foreign policy responsibilities and the president has wide latitude to conduct diplomacy. I would be very surprised if the FEC were to issue civil penalties against the president or his campaign.”

…

ISTM that you’re favoring an extremely broad interpretation of campaign finance laws. For example, if a fictional president were to ask a fictional foreign government for a favorable trade agreement sometime before his re-election bid, perhaps even planning on touting in campaign commercials how he had arranged a favorable trade agreement with this foreign government and it had brought benefits to the working class, I suppose by the strict letter of the law, one might try to claim that he had “solicited” an “other thing of value” from the foreign government, but I find that interpretation ludicrous. As the NPR article pointed out, the President needs some latitude to conduct foreign policy without any favorable thing being interpreted as an “other thing of value” for purposes of campaign finance laws. Your thoughts?

[racepug]

@ThelmaLou

Why do you people continue to engage with HD?

Excellent question. I will no longer do so (I made the mistake of doing so, once) because if he excels at anything it is in getting other people in trouble for engaging in him and his utter nonsense and lowering themselves to his level.

[Moriarty]

@Euphonious_Polemic

Extortion often relies on context. Mob enforcers don’t come into a store saying “pay me money or I will burn down your store.” That’s not how it works.
They let you know using cues and context what they expect.

You know this. You’re not stupid.

That being said, here is some context about the call between Trump and President Zelenskyy: Trump had recently withheld military aid to the Ukraine. Aid that was desperately needed to help Ukraine fend of Russian troops who had attacked them. Aid that was approved by the CONGRESS OF THE UNITES STATES. And Trump himself - Trump… had put a hold on this.
Then he called President Zelenskyy.

During the call, Zelenskyy said:
"I would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense. **We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps **specifically we are almost. ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes.
(Remember that Trump himself had recently put a hold on this military aid)

Immediately, Trump then said “I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.” He then went on to talk about a nutty conspiracy theory with no basis in fact. A theory that was manufactured to be politically damaging to Trump’s opponents - the nutty “Crowdstrike” conspiracy theory.

To summarize:
Zelenskyy: We are interested in getting that military aid that Congress promised and you personally are holding up
Trump: Let’s talk first about favors to me. Investigate my political opponents.

Trump went on then, to say: "**The other thing, **There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me.

So there are TWO THINGS that Trump wants. TWO FAVORS. FAVORS that Trump brought up DIRECTLY AFTER Zelenskyy said he’d like the military aid that Congress voted on, and that TRUMP HIMSELF was holding up.

It is so fucking obvious what is going on here, I am confident that you will agree that Trump was telling Zelenskyy that he would release the military aid that Congress approved, after Zelenskyy did him these two FAVORS. Both favors involved Ukraine launching investigations into Trump’s political opponents, based on no evidence, and conspiracy theories.

This is a well written and enlightening post.

As astutely noted, there is context here. But there’s even more context to be had, and it includes the months leading up to the call.
In fact, some commentators have even noted how dumb Trump is for mentioning Giuliani by name on the infamous call, since it’s abundantly obvious by this point that Giuliani has been actively lobbying in Ukraine on Trump’s behalf, and in active search of dirt on political opponents. Trump hardly has to remind Zelensky what he wants.

Consider this timeline preceding the call:

April 21: Zelensky, a former TV comedian, is elected president of Ukraine with 73 percent of the vote. Trump calls him to offer his congratulations.

April 23: Giuliani tweets about a Ukrainian investigation into alleged foreign collusion by the Democrats.

April 25: In an interview with Fox’s Sean Hannity, Trump addresses the suggestion that Ukraine interfered in 2016.
“I would imagine [Barr] would want to see this,” Trump says. “People have been saying this whole — the concept of Ukraine, they have been talking about it actually for a long time.”

Late April: [US Ambassador to Ukraine] Yovanovitch is summoned back to Washington “on the next plane,” according to her later congressional deposition. Once home, she says she meets with Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan, who informs her that her time as ambassador is being curtailed.
“He said that the President had lost confidence in me and no longer wished me to serve as his ambassador,” Yovanovitch later testifies. “He added that there had been a concerted campaign against me, and that the department had been under pressure from the president to remove me since the Summer of 2018. He also said that I had done nothing wrong and that this was not like other situations where he had recalled ambassadors for cause.”

May 1: The New York Times publishes a story tying Joe Biden’s pressure campaign in Ukraine to Shokin having investigated Burisma, portraying it as a potential liability in his 2020 campaign.
Around the same time, former Ukrainian prosecutor Kostiantyn H. Kulyk tells the Times that Yovanovitch had thwarted his efforts to deliver damaging information about the Bidens to the FBI, by denying his visa request.

May 7: Bloomberg casts doubt on the Times’s report, citing Ukrainian officials who say the Burisma investigation had long been dormant when Joe Biden applied pressure on Ukraine’s government.
The same day, it is reported that Yovanovitch has been recalled by the State Department, two months before her scheduled departure date. Democrats allege a “political hit job” aimed at creating a pretext to remove her. Yovanovitch will later say in a deposition that Trump pressured the State Department to remove her.
In his later, July 25 phone call with Zelensky, Trump will say Yovanovitch “was bad news, and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news, so I just want to let you know that,” according to a rough transcript provided by the White House. When Zelensky thanks Trump for previously warning him about Yovanovitch (exactly when that occurred isn’t clear), Trump responds, “Well, she’s going to go through some things.”

Some time in May: Giuliani meets with a top Ukrainian anti-corruption prosecutor, Nazar Kholodnytsky, in Paris, according to Kholodnytsky. Kholodnytsky, who had clashed with Yovanovitch, has declined to comment on what he and Guiliani discussed, but he said the Burisma investigation should be reopened.
Also some time this month, two Giuliani associates travel to Ukraine and meet with Ukrainian officials, according to a report cited by the whistleblower.

May 9: Giuliani tells the New York Times that he will travel to Ukraine to push for investigations, “because that information will be very, very helpful to my client, and may turn out to be helpful to my government.”

May 10: Amid an uproar over seeking foreign investigations that could potential tarnish one of Trump’s 2020 election opponents, Giuliani at first defends himself.

May 11: Giuliani cancels his Ukraine trip.
Lutsenko and Zelensky meet for two hours, according to the whistleblower, with the former requesting to stay in his position.

May 13: Barr announces a probe into the origins of the Russia investigation, responding to allegations from Trump and his congressional supporters who say the investigation was a thinly veiled effort to take him down.

May 14: Trump tells Vice President Pence not to attend Zelensky’s inauguration, according to the whistleblower. Instead, Energy Secretary Rick Perry attends. The whistleblower says it was “made clear” to them that “the President did not want to meet with Mr. Zelenskyy until he saw how Zelenskyy ‘chose to act’ in office.”
Giuliani tells a Ukrainian journalist that Yovanovitch was “removed … because she was part of the efforts against the president.”

Mid-May: The whistleblower starts hearing concerns about Giuliani’s circumvention of the government’s official processes as regards Ukraine.
The whistleblower is told that officials, including Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations Kurt Volker and E.U. Ambassador Gordon Sondland, had spoken with Giuliani to “contain the damage” he was doing. They are also told that the ambassadors had been working with Ukrainian officials to help them figure out how to resolve the conflict between the government’s messaging and Giuliani’s.
In the same time frame, officials tell the whistleblower that Ukrainian leaders believe “that a meeting or phone call between the President and President Zelenskyy would depend on whether Zelenskyy showed willingness to ‘play ball’ on the issues that had been publicly aired by Mr. Lutsenko and Mr. Giuliani.”

May 16: Lutsenko says there is no evidence of any wrongdoing by the Bidens.

May 19: In an interview with Fox News, Trump explicitly references Biden’s efforts in Ukraine.
“Biden, he calls them and says ‘Don’t you dare persecute, if you don’t fire this prosecutor’ — The prosecutor was after his son,” Trump says. “Then he said ‘If you fire the prosecutor, you’ll be okay. And if you don’t fire the prosecutor, 'we’re not giving you $2 billion in loan guarantees,’ or whatever he was supposed to give. Can you imagine if I did that?”
Again, the Burisma probe was dormant at the time, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials, and there was no evidence it focused on any actions by the Bidens.

May 20: Zelensky is inaugurated as president of Ukraine. Shortly after the inauguration, Giuliani meets with Ukrainian officials who are allied with Lutsenko and who made allegations included in Solomon’s reporting.

May 23: The administration notifies Congress that it intends to release aid money to Ukraine.

June 13: In an interview with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos, Trump says he might accept electoral assistance from a foreign government, if offered.
“I think you might want to listen, there isn’t anything wrong with listening,” Trump says. “If somebody called from a country, Norway, ‘We have information on your opponent’? Oh, I think I’d want to hear it.”
The chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission subsequently points out on Twitter that this would be illegal.

June 20: In an interview with Fox News, Trump links Ukraine and the effort to hack the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 election — a link that the whistleblower (and recent reporting) suggests doesn’t exist.

June 21: Giuliani tweets that Zelensky is “still silent on investigation of Ukrainian interference in 2016 election and alleged Biden bribery of Pres Poroshenko.”

July 12: Axios reports that Trump and Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats are at odds, with Trump telling confidants that he wants to remove Coats from his position.

July 18: Trump’s decision to withhold nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine is communicated to the State and Defense departments. Members of Congress are told that the hold is part of an “interagency delay.”

July 19: Ambassador Volker texts Giuliani to connect him with a Zelensky aide named Andrey Yermak.
Separately, Volker texts Sondland about the upcoming Zelensky call with Trump. “Most impt is for Zelensky to say that he will help investigation,” Volker says.

July 21: Bill Taylor, the U.S. charges d’affaires in Ukraine, tells Sondland via text that “President Zelenskyy is sensitive about Ukraine being taken seriously, not merely as an instrument in Washington domestic, reelection politics.”

July 22: Shokin alleges to The Post that he was removed over the Biden issue.
“I will answer that the activities of Burisma, the involvement of his son, Hunter Biden, and the [prosecutor general’s office] investigators on his tail, are the only — I emphasize, the only — motives for organizing my resignation,” he says. Other Ukrainian officials have cast doubt on this and said the investigation had long been dormant when Shokin was removed.
Yermak and Giuliani schedule a meeting in early August, according to Giuliani.

July 23. OMB reiterates that aid to Ukraine is suspended, per Trump.

July 24: Mueller testifies before Congress about his report and its findings.

July 25: Trump and Zelensky speak on the phone.

[Evil_Economist]

According to 538, for the first time ever, support for impeachment is now over 50%. That seems momentous.