September 25, 2019
Since the day Donald Trump became a presidential candidate those on the left have relentlessly looked for ways to politically destroy him. For three years Democrats have spewed accusations of Russian collusion, which then morphed into obstruction of justice. As these allegations have proven to be a bust, Democrats along with the mainstream media, have been on a fishing expedition looking for anything to damage President Trump. The latest Trump “scandal” involves a July 25th phone call between Ukraine’s President Zalensky and President Trump.
Without even seeing a transcript of this conversation, on Tuesday House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the House will begin a formal impeachment inquiry. The allegation is Trump exerted pressure, with the threat of denying military aid to Ukraine, if Ukraine did not investigate potential corruption of then Vice President Biden and his son Hunter Biden.
Background
In 2014 then Vice President Biden was the point man on U.S. relations with Ukraine. His responsibilities required him to travel frequently to Ukraine, as well as coordinate U.S. aid packages.
Shortly after Biden took on this role in Ukraine, Biden’s son Hunter accepted a board position with a Ukrainian natural gas company, Burisma Holdings. Reportedly Burisma paid Hunter $50,000 a month. Not only does Hunter have a troubled past involving alcohol and drug abuse, he had zero experience in natural gas, and doesn’t even speak the Ukrainian language. Seemingly, Hunter’s only qualification was his powerful father, which would make it appear that Burisma was buying Biden’s influence through his son.
In 2015 Burisma became the subject of an investigation for suspected money laundering, and alleged abuses of power. In a 2018 video Joe Biden can be seen proudly admitting that he threatened to withhold $1 billion in United States loan guarantees if the man in charge of investigating Burisma, Ukraine’s general prosecutor, Viktor Shokin was not fired. Within hours of making this threat Shokin was fired. Its been reported that prior to Shokin’s firing he had planned to interview Hunter Biden. According to the NY Times Biden was aware that Shokin was investigating Burisma Holdings, the firm employing his son, at the time that he demanded his firing.
Shokin is on record telling the Washington Post that he believed he was fired because he was investigating Hunter Biden and Burisma Holdings.
“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.”
Another Intelligence Leak
Similar to many of the previous accusations, this one has come into the public’s purview through an anonymous leak from an intelligence source. Incredibly, the “whistleblower” only learned of the contents of the conversation second hand, which he/she then reported to the Inspector General As frequently happens when there’s a potential negative story involving Trump, it was then leaked to a friendly news source. In this case – The Washington Post.
Not surprisingly, it was reported that the IG determined that the whistleblower had a “political bias” against Trump in favor of a “rival candidate”. Further, one of the whistleblower’s attorneys, Andrew Bakaj, is a Democratic operative. In 2001 he worked for both Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton.
Bakaj, and a second attorney representing the whistleblower, Mark Zaid run a group called “Whistleblower’s Aid”, which provides financial assistance to whistleblowers. Although this organization claims to be bipartisan, it was formed eight months after Trump’s inauguration. Further when one of the founders was asked about the reasoning for the group’s launch he stated that he was troubled by the firing of James Comey, and had concerns about “whether this administration respects the rule of law”.
The fact that the President of the United States can not have a conversation with his foreign counterparts, without fear that a member of U.S. intelligence is spying, and may leak and politically weaponize the conversation is deeply disturbing. This most certainly will have a chilling effect on the president’s future interactions with foreign leaders, which in turn could endanger our country’s national security.
Transcript
For the sake of complete transparency, and to prove that there was no quid pro quo, the Trump administration released the transcript of the conversation between the two presidents. Indeed the transcript revealed that Trump never even hinted that military aid would be withheld if Ukraine didn’t investigate Joe Biden and his son.
In fact Zelensky was the first one to bring up rooting out corruption when he expressed the desire to “drain the swamp here in our country”. It was around the middle of the conversation when Trump asked for “a favor” -that Ukraine look into the meddling that occurred in the 2016 presidential election. Specifically, he asked that they look into “Crowdstrike”. Crowdstrike is the firm hired by the DNC to conduct forensics when their computer system was breached. Trump added that he believed Ukraine had “the server”, presumably he was referring to the DNC server.
Later in the conversation Zelensky mentioned Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who has been working with Ukraine to uncover corruption. It is in this context Trump responded, that “theres 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.” This is the only time that Joe Biden or his son were ever mentioned during the thirty minute phone call. Further, U.S. aid to Ukraine was never discussed at any point in the conversation, nor was the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
At a joint press conference yesterday with President Trump and President Zelensky, Zelensky confirmed that he did not feel any pressure by Trump to take action.
As evidence that Trump nefariously withheld military aid to Ukraine, the left points out that aid to Ukraine was delayed by a month. Trump has explained that his dissatisfaction with the lack of assistance from the European Union to Ukraine was the reason for the delay. During the call Trump even mentioned to Zalensky that the European countries should offer more help to Ukraine. Moreover, the decision to delay the almost $400 million in military aid was made a week before this phone call ever took place.
Democratic Hypocrisy
Ironically, as reported by Marc Thiessen, three Democratic Senators did exactly what Democrats are claiming is such an egregious offense that it should lead to the removal of a duly elected president. In 2018 Sens. Robert Menendez, D-NJ, Patrick Leahy, D-VT, and Richard Durbin, D-ILL wrote a letter to Ukraine’s prosecutor general implying that U.S. assistance was at stake if they did not continue with certain investigations, which they stated was needed to aid the Special Counsel investigation into President Trump. In the letter they wrote that the U.S. has “supported the capacity-building process” in Ukraine; and demanded that Ukraine’s prosecutor “reverse course and halt any efforts to impede cooperation with this important investigation.”
During a bipartisan meeting in Kiev earlier this month Sen Chris Murphy (D-Conn) threatened President Zelensky that assisting the Trump administration and President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giulliani in investigating Ukrainian corruption involving Americans would be “disastrous for long-term U.S.-Ukraine relations”. The implication was clear, if Ukraine cooperated with Trump, future U.S. aid to Ukraine could be in jeopardy.
There is also evidence to indicate that the Obama administration elicited, or at least encouraged the intelligence agencies of other nations, such as – Great Britain, Australia, Ukraine, and Italy to investigate and spy on the Trump campaign, during the 2016 presidential election, propelling the Trump-Russia collusion narrative.
Then Democrat candidate for president, Hillary Clinton, didn’t just seek the help of foreign nationals to investigate her political rival and his campaign, her campaign financed the work of an oppositional research firm, which concocted Russian sourced lies about then candidate Trump and members of his campaign.
Further, as reported by John Solomon, the Ukrainian embassy confirmed that a Democratic National Committee employee, Alexandria Chalupa solicited dirt from the Ukrainian government on then candidate Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort during the 2016 presidential election. Additionally, Nellie Ohr, employee of Fusion GPS, and wife of Department of Justice employee Bruce Ohr, acknowledged to Congress that Ukrainian lawmaker Serhiy Leshchenko provided “dirt to Fusion”. Fusion is the firm which hired Christopher Steele to produce the infamous dossier that helped to ignite the Trump-Russia collusion narrative.
It’s incredulous that Democrats and most of the media believe that enlisting an ally to look into corruption involving Americans is an impeachable offense, yet they turn a blind eye to the many more overt occurrences of solicitations of foreign powers to meddle in U.S. affairs by those on their side of the aisle.
For years the left has scrutinized every action taken by this president and his administration, with the intent to destroy Trump’s presidency. Hopefully, U.S. Attorney John Durham, who has been tasked by Attorney General Barr with investigating the origins of the Trump-Russia collusion investigation, along with Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, will soon shine some long overdue sunlight on the corruption and the weaponization of power used against the current administration.
