Trump's impeachment is the only option after Ukraine call transcript
Laurence H. Tribe, Opinion contributor
Let us count the ways. The White House readout of President Donald Trumps phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shows that the American president has committed a multitude of high crimes and misdemeanors, all of them impeachable. Even without considering the many prior offenses that were surfaced in the Mueller report and in the special counsels prosecutions of numerous Trump allies and associates, including in the Southern District of New York, this readout which must be the least incriminating version the White House could compose despite its remarkable skills at shading the truth or falsifying it altogether is utterly devastating.
The high crimes and misdemeanors that the readout reveals to use the Constitutions term for impeachable offenses beyond treason and bribery (both of which the readout comes close to establishing) begin with Trump abusing the foreign policy powers entrusted to the president by Article II in order to serve his own political interests rather than the interests of the American people.
Ukraine pressed by Trump, Russia
Those interests were defined here by a bipartisan decision of the Congress we elected to represent us in world affairs using its Article I spending power: Congress decided that it was in our nations security interest to provide nearly $400 million in aid to the beleaguered patriots of an American ally fighting a bloody battle with an American adversary. The ally was Ukraine. The adversary was Russia, which had not so coincidentally tried to help Trump win office in 2016.
Even if this action werent payback to Russian President Vladimir Putin and yet another indication of how beholden Trump is to that brutal dictator which it may well have been it was a blatant usurpation of Congress Appropriation Clause authority for Trump to withhold the aid the Ukranians needed. When asked by Ukraines president in this July 25 phone call to purchase more Javelin missiles from the United States for defense purposes, Trump responded that he would gladly do so, although he actually used the word though he would greatly appreciate that foreign presidents aid in, among other things, gathering evidence to effectively help prosecute Trumps main rival for the presidency in the forthcoming election.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/trumps-impeachment-is-the-only-option-after-ukraine-call-transcript/ar-AAHQpC8?li=BBnb7Kz