What President Trump did isn’t seriously contested by anybody. After the end of arguments, several Republicans said point blank that they accept the facts as presented by the House managers but that the President’s actions weren’t sufficient to impeach. The remaining Republicans, when pressed on the issue by the media, exploded in a vitriolic diatribe against the House. That’s like breaking out in tears when a traffic cop stops you going 30 miles over the speed limit. “Give me a break, will you? P-lease?”
The president’s own lawyers, in the second day of their defense in the impeachment trial, divulged into a lengthy, hours-long exposition on culpability, trying to prove that “even if he did do what he’s accused of, it’s in his rights.” I mean, really. If you were sitting on a jury and the accused made that argument? Well, at that point, you damn well know they’re angling for a lenient sentence. Ditto for the President’s lawyers.
What exactly did the President of the United States do?
The setting for all of this is Ukraine, a nation southeast of Europe (roughly the size of Tennessee + Georgia + Kentucky + North and South Carolina). It shares borders, roughly equally, with Romania, Poland, Belarus, Russia, and (across the Black Sea) Turkey. Ukraine declared independence from the Soviet Union in August 1991, four months before the Soviet Union dissolved.
The House managers said Ukraine inherited 1300 nuclear warheads from the Soviets (the world’s third-largest nuclear stockpile), which they turned over in return for our pledge to defend them against Soviet aggression. That’s a bit of an understatement:
From the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (a very pro-Trump website): The US, Russia, and the UK (the three signatories of the Budapest Agreement) “pledged to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and the inviolability of its borders, abstain from economic coercion, and refrain from the threat or use of force—nuclear or otherwise. The memorandum did not specify the assistance Ukraine was to receive if it became a victim of aggression. Ukrainians, however, were led to believe that the US would uphold its commitments to its security in the time of need, as Ukraine upheld its commitment to nuclear nonproliferation norms.”
All of Ukraine’s nukes were all turned over to Russia.
The importance of the implied support of America can’t be understated. While Ukraine had nuclear weapons, they had a strong defense: “Invade us, and we’ll nuke you.” The United States pledged in return for giving up their nuclear warheads: “Invade Ukraine and we’ll retaliate in kind.” Even if this promise wasn’t made in so many words, it’s clear that Ukraine was terrified of Russian aggression at the time, and you know damn well they never would have signed that agreement (with Russia on the other side of the table, no less) without very strong reassurances from the United States.
The Russians invaded Crimea in 2014 and annexed the entire Black Sea peninsula shortly thereafter. The Crimea (roughly the size of Louisiana) is the French Riviera of the entire region. It’s a large island, the most southernmost territory of the former Soviet Union, and a real steal for the Russians. It’s like losing the entire state of Florida (with all its sunshine, temperate weather, and awesome coastline) to a foreign invasion.
The United States did oppose the invasion, sending Ukraine $1 billion in non-lethal military aid since 2014. We didn’t commit troops, however. President Obama didn’t want to send deadly military hardware for fear of inciting the Russians to further violence. Only six people were killed when Russia annexed Crimea, three of them protesters. The Russians then held a referendum, where 96% voted to join Russia (86% of eligible citizens voted), so it wasn’t (necessarily) a violent action by Russia.
However, there has been violence since 2014, continuously, as the Russian Federation invaded from the west (northwest of Crimea) with a large military force. Last summer, when the events in question took place, Ukraine was still fighting this major military assault, having lost roughly 10% of Ukraine’s territory to Russia.
So. That’s what was happening in the summer of 2019 when Trump’s questionable actions took place: The Russo-Ukrainian War.
I say again: Ukraine was at war against Russia, on multiple fronts. They’d been at war with Russia continuously, ever since the Russian Federation annexed Crimea in 2014. The Ukrainians desperately needed military aid. Note: Ukraine isn’t a member of NATO, which has done little more than to “increase its maritime cooperation with Ukraine” in response to this continuous assault on is neighbor to the southeast. The EU has given $12 billion in aid to Ukraine since 2014, compared to $3 billion from the US in that same time period. However, there’s zero chance of getting the kind of lethal military aid that they need to counter the Russian incursion from the EU. Only the US could provide what they need to combat a military invasion, and that’s what Trump was holding back (i.e., Javelin anti-tank missiles).
Key point: Ukraine’s only formal alliance was with the United States (assuming the inaction by the UK, which follows NATO’s lead), per the Budapest Agreement. Hence, America was the only nation in the world to which they could turn and formally expect help in this, their hour of greatest need.
And so, when President Trump halted $400 million in military aid in conjunction with a phone call with Ukraine President Zelensky on July 25, 2019, it was a very clear and present danger to the sovereignty of Ukraine. Like, you’re not going to freak out when your main ally in the whole world pulls a “Lucy” on you (the Peanuts character who constantly taunts Charlie Brown to boot the football but always yanks it away at the last minute)? The President’s defense lawyers made little of the situation as if it really was cartoonish.
That halt in military aid also sent a strong signal to Russia: We’re not going to honor the Budapest Agreement. Go for it!
How did Trump use this strong-arm threat to the people of Ukraine? He told Ukraine that if they wanted their money and America’s symbolic support in their war with Russia, they’d have to announce a formal investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden for corruption.
Say what? How did we get from A the hot war to B the mafioso shakedown?
In May 2014, the Burisma Group, a large natural gas firm in Ukraine, hired Hunter Biden, son of VP Joe Biden, to be on their Board of Directors. Burisma’s founder, a former government official, named Zlochevsky, was at the time under investigation by Britain’s Serious Fraud Office for money laundering. (Notice: “under investigation.”)
In December 2015, VP Joe Biden said corruption was eating away at Ukraine “like a cancer” and threatened to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees if Ukraine’s top prosecutor, Shotkin, wasn’t removed from power. The aid wasn’t held back for more than a few hours. The Ukraine parliament did, in fact, remove Shotkin from power three months later because he wasn’t doing his job: investigating and rooting out corruption (Burisma was among the companies he was supposed to investigate but did not).
The backstory here is that since leaving the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine has been crippled by corruption from former Soviet officials who remained in power in Kyiv. The official that Trump dealt with in the aforementioned phone call was President Zelensky, who had been elected in May 2019 on an anti-corruption platform (with 73% of the popular vote). An anti-corruption High Court had been created by the parliament a month earlier, so the people of Ukraine were truly fed up with corruption.
Notably, President Zelenskey never did cave in to Trump’s strong-arm tactics, not even when Trump upped the ante with a formal meeting in the Oval Office.
Notice the optics here: President Trump tried to coerce an anti-corruption leader (who had just won a historic election on a staunchly anti-corruption platform which was overwhelmingly supported by the people of Ukraine) into investigating a political opponent (VP Biden was at the time the leading Democrat nominee for the 2020 election), to announce on American cable TV (Trump’s surrogates specified CNN) that Ukraine was investigating VP Biden for corruption – in order to gain an edge with the American electorate. The headline:
“A corrupt U.S. President trying to strong-arm an anti-corruption ally.”
These are the facts, and they’re not seriously contested, even from any Republicans. Here’s the timeline:
The infamous shakedown phone call occurred on June 25, 2019. Ukraine President Zelensky posted details of the call on his official website the following day.
A whistleblower filed a complaint about that phone call with the intelligence community inspector general on August 12th. The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) should have sent the complaint to Congress by September 2nd. He did not.
On September 9th, intelligence IG notified Chairman Schiff of the Foreign Affairs Committee (which has oversight responsibilities here) gets notice from the intelligence IG of an “urgent concern” that the DNI has overruled. Three house committees announce investigations into the matter later that day.
On September 10th, Chairman Schiff demands the DNI turn over the whistleblower complaint. He refuses. Chairman Schiff subpoenas the DNI. He refuses to appear.
After the story was reported in the New York Times and other mainstream media, the White House finally releases a transcript of the phone call on September 24th. Later that day, Speaker Pelosi announces a formal impeachment inquiry into what happened. (Originally, their concern was that, during the phone call, Trump had asked no less than eight-time for an investigation into the Bidens.)
On October 8th, the White House sent an 8-page letter to the House of Representatives, saying that everybody in the Executive Branch has been ordered not to cooperate with the House’s impeachment inquiry because it’s partisan and unconstitutional, promising to end all cooperation with Congress in important oversight matters.
True to word, the White House didn’t cooperate with the House investigations. The President’s legal counsel didn’t participate in any hearings, question any witnesses, call any of their own witnesses, or any other actions typically undertaken by a defense attorney. The President’s lawyers, during the impeachment trial in the Senate, later claimed that they were denied any and all such opportunities to participate, which is patently false.
To summarize: The House Foreign Affairs Committee was notified of a whistleblower complaint in a foreign, national security issue. As required by law, which gives the House oversight responsibilities (with all the authority needed to investigate, including to issue subpoenas mandating sworn testimony), the Foreign Affairs Committee began investigating. The White House initially balked, then refused, then officially ordered all members of the Executive Branch not to participate in the House investigation.
On December 19, the House passed the articles of impeachment. Article one was for abuse of power, which references the President’s shakedown of President Zelensky for his own personal, political gain. Article two was for obstruction of congress, referencing the White House’s actions to block any and all attempts to investigate, beginning with stalling the initial whistleblower complaint.
The House did investigate, to the best of its ability (given the constraints on those they wanted to talk to as enforced by the White House), and solidified the facts of the case. Key witnesses violated the White House injunction against them. They include Ukraine Ambassador Maria Yovanovitch (an anti-corruption expert), LTC Alexander Vindman (a national security expert in the White House), EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland (a Trump appointee who contributed $1 million to the Trump campaign), Kurt Volker (special envoy to Ukraine), Fiona Hill (the White Houses’ top Ukraine security expert), and William Taylor (US ambassador to Ukraine), among others.
A half dozen more witnesses sought by the House refused to testify. In addition, notes and documents created by the above witnesses (and others who cooperated) were taken from them by the administration, which has since refused to produce said documents into evidence as requested via numerous House subpoenas.
The White House at no time referenced executive privilege as their reason for refusing to cooperate. They only said the impeachment process was illegal because its sole basis was political in nature.
A key witness sought by the House managers was John Bolton, who has written a memoir of his almost forty years in government service, as a national security expert then advisor to the president. Excerpts of this book, scheduled to be released on March 17, 2020, were leaked to the New York Times during the impeachment proceedings.
The Bolton excerpts allude to first-hand verification that Trump did in fact make the “quid pro quo” (this for that: you announce the Biden investigation and I’ll release the military aid), that VP Pence, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and others were intimately involved, and that the plot to hang a corruption tag on VP Biden actually began six months before the Ukraine phone call when former New York City mayor Rudolf Giuliani got involved, as the president’s personal lawyer. Mayor Giuliani was intimately involved in the whole drama, as revealed in the House investigation, and at many different levels.
An assistant and investigator of Mayor Giuliani, Lev Parnas, a native Ukrainian (currently under inditement for conspiring to violate campaign finance laws by donating to the Trump campaign), worked with the mayor to collect dirt on the Bidens in Ukraine. Mr. Parnas has provided documents, videos, and personal testimony that materially supports the case against Trump.
The Bidens have never been found to have done anything wrong. Significant corruption allegations were made in all the media in the summer of 2014 after Hunter Biden joined the Board of the Burisma Group. The Republicans had control of both Houses of Congress until they lost the House in the 2018 elections. No GOP committee investigated the Bidens, nor had sufficient cause to even initiate an investigation (and you know damn well they would have done so if they could have). Since Trump was elected, the government has never investigated the Bidens; again, because there was no evidence to justify it.
That’s why Trump only wanted Ukraine President Zelensky to publicly announce the investigation, not to actually carry it out. Because “announce” is all that anybody could do.
The formal impeachment trial of President Trump began on January 16, 2020, when the Articles of Impeachment were sent to the US Senate by House Speaker Pelosi.