Slate "The Case for Impeaching Trump Over Ukraine Is Already Complete"

[NRaleighLiberal]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/11/trump-impeachment-ukraine-guide-evidence.html

The House Intelligence Committee has finished its first round of public hearings regarding impeachment and will have to fight in court to compel the appearance of further witnesses. In the meantime, let’s make the case for impeachment for Ukraine-related “high crimes” as simply as possible.

Donald Trump ordered that congressionally authorized military aid for Ukraine and an invitation to the White House for Ukraine’s president be withheld unless Ukraine made a public announcement that it was “investigating” Joe Biden’s son and various 2016 election conspiracy theories. These investigations would have benefited Trump politically but would not have advanced any U.S. policy interest.

Now let’s break that up into provable chunks.

[Donald Trump] [ordered that congressionally authorized military aid for Ukraine] [and an invitation to the White House for Ukraine’s president] [be withheld unless Ukraine made a public announcement that it was “investigating”] [Joe Biden and his son] [and various 2016 election conspiracy theories.] [These investigations would have benefited Trump politically] [but would not have advanced any U.S. policy interest.]

Now let’s prove all the chunks!

[Donald Trump]: Testimony shows that Trump directed the acts that Democrats in the House are investigating. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland said that Trump told him and other officials at a May 2019 meeting to speak to his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, about Ukraine, and that Giuliani subsequently outlined “investigations” (discussed below) that would have to be undertaken before Trump would advance the United States’ diplomatic relationship with the country in the way that Sondland and others recommended. Former special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker testified that interactions with Trump (and Giuliani) led him to conclude that Trump’s participation in Ukraine diplomacy was contingent on the satisfaction of Giuliani’s requests. And State Department official David Holmes testified that he overheard Trump asking Sondland about “investigations” when Sondland spoke to Trump about Ukraine by phone in July at a lunch attended by Holmes and others.


snip - good read - the end below

The consensus position of U.S. intelligence agencies, meanwhile, is that the attack on Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016 was carried out by Russian military intelligence. Former National Security Council official Fiona Hill testified Thursday that accusations of Ukraine-Clinton collusion are “a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”

As illustrated by the mere six weeks or so it took House Intel to assemble the above information, there is likely much more that Democrats could discover by continuing to investigate this and other Trump administration misconduct. But they’ve got one article of impeachment already locked down.

[Stuart G]

1. K and R