Extortion.
Bribery and extortion are of course two sides of the same coin, and the Constitution specifically mentions bribery as grounds for impeachment: “Treason, Bribery, and other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Last eight words of Article II.
Oh, and it doesn’t matter in the least if Zelenskiy was unaware that the aid was being withheld. If Trump intended to use it as a cudgel to make Zelenskiy do something, then that suffices.
My first thought is that there is a lot in that NPR story to suggest that, yes, the President broke the law. You are cutting and pasting to make it say otherwise.
For example, the headline is “Trump’s Ukraine Call Might Violate Election Laws, But No One’s Enforcing Them”, which is altogether different than a story that says that he did not break the laws. And there are people quoted in the story who pretty clearly say that he did, or that soliciting foreign assistance of the kind that Trump did is illegal.
Brendan Fischer, one of the people I quoted, is also somebody you quoted for the proposition that the FEC might not act on this. Not only did I accurately quote his opinion that Trump broke the law, the NPR article you’ve cited provides a link to another article he wrote where he unequivocally says so. It’s literally titled, "Yes, President Trump Violated Campaign Finance Law by Asking Ukraine for a “Favor” By Brendan Fischer and Erin Chlopak.
So, while a President needs some latitude in discussing matters with foreign leaders, it is simply not true that damaging info/investigations on your opponent is one of those close calls where judgment can go either way. It is clear that it is outside the bounds, and I request a better cite if you want to continue to argue otherwise.
As to your hypothetical: Where to draw the line? Well, a trade deal (which you mentioned) presumably has obvious benefits to the nation as a whole, or at least identifiable parts that are separate and distinct from the president’s personal ambitions. So, even if that type of political negotiations would benefit the President, it is not a circumstance where the president is seeking prioritizing personal aggrandizement. Creating, or promoting, a scandal against an opponent is entirely the opposite (especially since there are mechanisms to investigate law breaking by Americans that don’t involve the active furtherance by a foreign government).
I would really prefer not to see such drive-by slaps. If you feel you must insult someone, do it at length in the Pit and don’t make it a key part of a thread in GD or Elections.
Quoting myself for a bit more than three years ago in a similar circumstance:
I don’t know if I’m a Democrat or a Republican anymore, either. I have voted for Reagan and Bush I, Perot, Bush II once, and Obama twice. I didn’t like either choice this last time, so I wrote in Bernie Sanders in honor of my mom, who was a huge supporter of his but died a few months before the election.
I believe Trump’s motives were purely selfish and underhanded. I think he didn’t care if any evidence was true or false, as long as there was something he could point to and tweet about. I don’t believe there was any evidence to be had, so yes, to your point, any evidence he received would probably be manufactured. I can concede to your opinion that, like the quid pro quo, though it wasn’t stated in so many words, the inference was there.
It is support in the Senate we need to worry about.
Of course it matters! That’s the shaky foundation for all these “Trump was acting like a mob enforcer” posts and reasoning. They all assume Zelensky knew that Trump was withholding the money (or Javelins in some tellings), and so Trump’s “I would like you to do us a favor” is supposed to have an ominous ring to Zelensky like a mobster’s “It’d be a shame if something happened”. If Zelensky doesn’t know that he’s being extorted (because he in fact is not), that perceived ominous tone evaporates.
A sweet gesture that helped elect Donald Trump. Hope that was what she would have wanted.
Chicken, egg.
Goons inside store: “This is a nice store, would be a shame if something happened to it!”
Store owner: “Thank you! It sure is a nice store, and it sure would be a shame if something happened to it!”
Goons: …
Store owner: (Smiles like an idiot)
End Scene
You mean that Senators listen to their constituents?
If voting could really change things, they wouldn’t let us do it.
It’s not like this hasn’t happened before…
The scene is more like this:
Goons inside store: “This is a nice store, would be a shame if something happened to it!”
Store owner: Got it.
Beat cop: Hey, store owner, did this guy threaten you?
Goons: Yeah, store owner. Did I threaten you, or was this a perfect conversation we just had?
Store owner: Er, no! No threat at all! Just a friendly conversation! I didn’t even know that guy had a can of gasoline sitting on the sidewalk out front. Everything’s fine!
Goon fans: SEE? SEE? NO THREAT! NO QUID PRO QUO!
Frankly, accepting Zelensky’s statement at face value is foolish, given Trump’s reputation and how he conducts foreign affairs. A small nation whose existence is threatened by Russia, and who’s already been invaded once, is going to do nothing whatsoever to piss off America’s most petulant politician.
OK, enough.
This thread has created many reports from both sides today. Enough that I could either note or warn an arbitrarily large number of posters.
Instead, I’m declaring this thread a ‘super secret double-probation courtesy zone’. You will all, regardless of your political persuasion, be on best behavior. No shots at other posters, no comments about other posters. No nothing except discussing the topic at hand.
We’re gonna have this impeachment thing for a while. I’d prefer that it NOT become a flaming wreck of trains.
I hope that’s clear to everyone.
Understood.
Never mind.
It defies any reasonable logic to think that Zelensky did not know that Trump wanted certain things from him. The key to realize is that this call is not the first time these sides have discussed this, even if, perhaps, this is the first time that Trump and Zelensky discussed this.
For months, Giuliani and his people had been traveling to Ukraine or promoting the Ukraine corruption story, to the point that there’s reporting that US officials were trying to undo the confusion regarding US foreign policy that Rudy was creating.
Hell, contemporary reporting from the date of Zelensky’s inauguration makes this clear.
So you are being too narrow in your focus if all you’ll do is look at this one phone conversation for evidence that there was some sort of negotiation going on. The groundwork for the precious quid pro quo had already been set long ago. It was painfully obvious what Trump wanted, and Zelensky had to know - when Trump said he wanted him to talk to Giuliani, and specifically mentioned Hunter Biden - that this related to the fact that, for months, Giuliani had been working this Biden corruption angle.
To use the shop/mobster analogy, it’d be like if the mobster’s goon, Fat Tony, had been coming around the shop for months saying, directly, “you better start paying if you don’t want your shop to get destroyed”. Then, one day, the mobster finally strolls in and casually says, “Nice shop. I sure hope it don’t get destroyed. You should talk to my boy Tony about that.” You’d have to be willfully ignorant not to know what he means.
Moriarty, thank you for your well-reasoned post #2681. I read the cited NPR article and arrived at identical refutations, although I wouldn’t have said them as eloquently.
Then I thought of something important I needed to do today (get my farm machinery winterized), and that took precedence over crafting a response.
The answer is right in Ditka’s first cherry-picked quote from the article: “The Department of Justice doesn’t think so.”
Let’s not forget that this DOJ takes the position that a president is not subject to prosecution, only impeachment – which renders impeachment the only discussion of importance. Discussing criminal offenses, as Ditka wants us to do, is a waste of time – even though probable cause exists to believe Trump has committed criminal offenses.
HD,even taking the background of $391 million aid package off the table, and charitably assuming it was being withheld by Trump for nebulous “corruption” reasons completely separate from the contents of the phone call, we’re still left with the president putting the brakes on a $39 million dollar Javelin purchase, and a veiled threat to the Ukraine that the current “non-reciprocal” nature of the relationship may cause the US to stop being so “very, very good” to it, all to investigate conspiracy theories about Joe Biden and the DNC, and to work with his personal lawyer.
Isn’t the withholding of funds authorized by Congress by itself a problem, with or without the quid pro quo?
It has been noted before, and should be noted again, that the proper avenue for investigating crime and corruption is to utilize US government law enforcement and investigative agencies. There’s no possible legitimate reason for a US government official, especially the President, to skip this step and ask a foreign government to do it. Especially if the target of the proposed investigation is a political opponent.