Ukraine & Impeachment
Sunday
On Sunday Trump admitted to asking Ukraine to investigate Biden.
Monday
On Monday seven freshmen Congressmen (including Sherril of NJ11) said of Trump’s Ukraine gambit: “If these allegations are true, we believe these actions represent an impeachable offense.” They also wrote: “Congress must determine whether the president was indeed willing to use his power and withhold security assistance funds to persuade a foreign country to assist him in an upcoming election.”
According to the Washington Post: “Pelosi, according to multiple senior House Democrats and congressional aides, has asked colleagues whether they believe that Trump’s own admission that he pressured a Ukrainian leader to investigate a political foe is a tipping point. She was making calls as late as Monday night to gauge support in the caucus, and many leadership aides who once thought Trump’s impeachment was unlikely now say they think it’s almost inevitable.”
The New York Times has a good summary of the timeline of the decision to freeze the Ukraine aid money of 391 million just days before the phone call: “Lawmakers pressed the administration on why the Ukraine aid was being held, but were first told the assistance was being reviewed to determine whether it was in the best interest of foreign policy. Other administration officials said, without detail, there was a review on corruption in Ukraine, according to current and former officials. Then, as August drew to a close, other officials told lawmakers they were trying to gauge the effectiveness of the aid, a claim that struck congressional aides as odd, the officials said. But Vice President Mike Pence later said that the review was based on concerns from the White House about ‘issues of corruption.'”
Here is the aid money in question: “The assistance came in two pots overseen by different agencies — $250 million from the Defense Department’s Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative and $141 from the State Department’s foreign military financing program. The funds were intended to help train and equip Ukrainian forces in their fight to stave off Russian incursion.”
Tuesday
After a build up all of Tuesday in which more House Democrats voiced support for impeachment, Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry at a press conference at 5pm.
The Washington Post has an interesting story, in which officials are quoted saying they tried to stop a Trump meeting or call with Ukraine because they feared this would be the outcome; “Rudy — he did all of this,” one U.S. official said. “This s—show that we’re in — it’s him injecting himself into the process.”; Although the question of a linkage or leverage never came up in the formal NSC discussions, participants began to believe that Trump was “withholding the aid until [Ukraine] gave him something on Biden or Manafort.”
Lawfare had a piece hot off the presses Tuesday afternoon recommending five articles of impeachment topics: obstruction of justice; unlawfully using power of the office to start investigations of opponents; misuse of foreign policy and congressional money in the Ukraine case; impeding congressional investigations through refusal to hand over witnesses and documents; lying to the public.
Nate Silver on why this time might be different: “The public was largely not persuaded about the wisdom of impeaching Trump on Russia. And Ukraine provides a much clearer story, in some ways: Trump allegedly pressured a foreign leader to undermine one of his chief rivals in the 2020 election. It’s not a case of the cover-up being worse than the crime, or of Trump attempting to obstruct the investigation, or of actions that took place before Trump took office. It’s a direct, recent and relatively simple throughline.”
Ignatius brings the issue to a fine point: “Why is this more than just another Trump vs. Democrats mud fight? Because the Ukraine issue is about compromising U.S. national security — and direct pledges to allies — for the president’s personal political gain.” He also includes some specific reporting about how badly needed battlefield equipment (L3 Technologies comms devices) was delayed, and how Lindsay Graham directly told the White House to release the aid.
Wednesday
Here is the call summary the White House released Wednesday afternoon that contains much of the language between Trump and Zelensky on the July 25 phone call. It was immediately interpreted as very damming evidence against Trump.
David French: “When Trump demanded reciprocity, he made it clear what reciprocity meant, and it meant in part an investigation of a leading Democratic candidate for President. Under these facts, an impeachment inquiry is an entirely appropriate response.”
Lawfare: “That text unambiguously reflects conduct intolerable in a president in a number of different respects. And it does so in five brief, easy-to-understand pages, in which Trump clearly seeks to recruit a foreign head of state to violate the civil liberties of American citizens and uncover dirt on a potential political opponent in the 2020 presidential election.”
ABC News reports that some Ukrainian aids interpreted Trump’s request as a quid pro quo: “It was clear that [President Donald] Trump will only have communications if they will discuss the Biden case,” said Serhiy Leshchenko, an anti-corruption advocate and former member of Ukraine’s Parliament, who now acts as an adviser to Zelenskiy. “This issue was raised many times. I know that Ukrainian officials understood.”
Details dribbled out on Wednesday evening after the whistleblower complaint was released to Congress, including: “Mr. Atkinson eventually concluded that there was reason to believe that the president might have illegally solicited a foreign campaign contribution — and that his potential misconduct created a national security risk”
IG Atkinson believed that Trump may have violated two layers of the low: one, soliciting foreign assistance to influence a political campaign; two, “that Mr. Trump’s potential misconduct might expose him ‘to serious national security and counterintelligence risks.'”
Bouie games out what he thinks Barr, whom Trump mentioned in the call, would have done: “it’s not hard to imagine how Barr might use “revelations” from the Ukrainian government to pursue an inquiry into the former vice president and his son, releasing information at a pace that feeds the story, strengthens the appearance of impropriety and ultimately undermines Biden’s campaign.”
By Wednesday night there were 218 House lawmakers in support of impeachment, which is all that is needed to pass articles of impeachment.
Thursday
The whistleblower complaint, released Thursday morning, has as its first sentence: “I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.”
And then the new and significant revelation: “the transcript was loaded into a separate electronic system that is otherwise used to store and handle classified information of an especially sensitive nature. One White House official described this act as an abuse of this electronic system because the call did not contain anything remotely sensitive from a national security perspective.”
Bill Barr is also mentioned. Here is an interesting footnote: “In May, Attorney General Barr announced that he was initiating a probe into the “origins” of the Russia investigation. According to the above-referenced OCCRP report (22 July), two associates of Mr. Giuliani claimed to be working with Ukrainian officials to uncover information that would become part of this inquiry. In an interview with Fox News on 8 August, Mr. Giuliani claimed that Mr. John Durham, whom Attorney General Barr designated to lead this probe, was “spending a lot of time in Europe” because he was “investigating Ukraine.” I do not know the extent to which, if at all, Mr. Giuliani is directly coordinating his efforts on Ukraine with Attorney General Barr or Mr. Durham.”
Acting DNI Maguire testified before the House today and made the case for why he held up handing over the complaint to Congress. In short he believed there were executive privilege concerns, and the White House and DOJ told him he did not need to turn it over.
Friday
Kurt Volker resigned on Friday after Giuliani outed his involvement in the Ukraine scandal by showing his text messages on TV and tweeting them out. Giuliani was apparently trying to prove the he was not acting alone but in conjunction with the State Department.
Immigration
A judge blocked the administration’s attempt to overturn toe Flores Decree.
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Trump’s Job Approval: 42.8% (reached 43.1% for one day during this week)