WSJ
This is like three classics of political hooliganism rolled into one:Trump Repeatedly Pressed Ukraine President to Investigate Biden’s Son
Interactions under focus amid whistleblower complaint on U.S. president’s dealings with a world leader
By Alan Cullison,
Rebecca Ballhaus and
Dustin Volz
Updated Sept. 20, 2019 4:03 pm ET
President Trump in a July phone call repeatedly pressured the president of Ukraine to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden ’s son, urging Volodymyr Zelensky about eight times to work with Rudy Giuliani, his personal lawyer, on a probe, according to people familiar with the matter.
“He told him that he should work with [Mr. Giuliani] on Biden, and that people in Washington wanted to know” whether allegations were true or not, one of the people said. Mr. Trump didn’t mention a provision of foreign aid to Ukraine on the call, said this person, who didn’t believe Mr. Trump offered the Ukrainian president any quid-pro-quo for his cooperation on any investigation.
Mr. Giuliani in June and August met with top Ukrainian officials about the prospect of an investigation, he said in an interview. The Trump lawyer has suggested Mr. Biden as vice president worked to shield from investigation a Ukrainian gas company with ties to his son, Hunter Biden. A Ukrainian official earlier this year said he had no evidence of wrongdoing by Mr. Biden or his son.
After the July call between the two presidents, the Ukrainian government said Mr. Trump had congratulated the new president on his election and expressed hope that his government would push ahead with investigations and corruption probes that had stymied relations between the two countries.
The White House declined to comment. The Biden campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment. Last week, a Biden campaign spokesman said of Mr. Giuliani’s efforts to pressure Ukraine: “This is beneath us as Americans.”
Mr. Trump on Friday defended his July call with Mr. Zelensky as “totally appropriate” but declined to say whether he had asked the Ukrainian leader to investigate Mr. Biden, a former U.S. vice president. “It doesn’t matter what I discussed,” he said.
At the same time, he reiterated his call for an investigation into Mr. Biden’s effort as vice president to oust Ukraine’s prosecutor general. “Somebody ought to look into that," he told reporters.
In recent months, Mr. Giuliani has mounted an extensive effort to pressure Ukraine to do so. He told The Wall Street Journal he met with an official from the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office in June in Paris, and met with Andriy Yermak, a top aide to Mr. Zelensky in Madrid in August. Mr. Giuliani told the Journal earlier this month that Mr. Yermak assured him the Ukrainian government would “get to the bottom” of the Biden matter.
The August meeting came weeks before the Trump administration began reviewing the status of $250 million in foreign aid to Ukraine, which the administration released earlier this month. Mr. Giuliani said he wasn’t aware of the issue with the funds to Ukraine at the time of the meeting.
He said his meeting with Mr. Yermak was set up by the State Department, and said he briefed the department on their conversation later. The State Department had no immediate comment.
The interactions between the president, Mr. Giuliani and Ukraine have come under scrutiny in recent days in the wake of a whistleblower complaint that a person familiar with the matter said involves the president’s communications with a foreign leader. The complaint, which the Washington Post reported centers on Ukraine, has prompted a new standoff between Congress and the executive branch.
Separately, lawmakers have been investigating whether the president or his lawyer sought to pressure the Ukrainian government to pursue probes in an effort to benefit Mr. Trump’s re-election bid.
Mr. Trump is to meet with Mr. Zelensky in person for the first time next week, during the annual United Nations General Assembly gathering in New York.
Michael Atkinson, the Trump-appointed inspector general of the intelligence community, met Thursday morning with the House Intelligence Committee in a closed session to discuss the whistleblower complaint. Mr. Atkinson declined to tell lawmakers the substance of the complaint or whether it involves the president, but he did say it involves more than one episode and is based on a series of events, according to several people who attended or were briefed on the meeting.
Joseph Maguire, a retired Navy vice admiral serving as the acting director of national intelligence, is to appear before both the Senate and House intelligence committees next week about the complaint, though it remains unclear if he will be willing to divulge details about its underlying substance.
Stymied Democrats in Congress continued to mull potential avenues to obtain the complaint. Rep. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said he was considering a lawsuit to obtain the complaint or withholding funding from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Mr. Schiff has accused Mr. Maguire of violating the law by not sending the complaint to Congress, as required under the federal whistleblower statute.
“It’s been very hard for the director of national intelligence to explain why he is the first ever in that position to withhold an urgent whistleblower complaint from Congress,” Mr. Schiff told reporters.
Mr. Maguire’s office consulted the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which determined that the allegation didn’t meet the statutory definition of an “urgent concern” requiring reporting to the intelligence committees, the Justice Department said.
That guidance is binding on the executive branch, legal experts said, and it remains unclear how or whether Mr. Maguire could transmit the complaint to lawmakers now.
Even before the debate over the whistleblower complaint, Democratic lawmakers had begun investigating interactions with Ukraine by the president and his lawyer. Earlier this month, the House Foreign Affairs, Intelligence and Oversight committees sent letters to the White House and State Department seeking records of interactions involving the president and Mr. Giuliani and the Ukrainian government.
Lawmakers are investigating whether there was any connection between the review of foreign aid to Ukraine and the efforts to pressure Kiev to look into Mr. Biden.
In the interview this month, Mr. Giuliani said he had sought in the spring to meet with Mr. Zelensky—at the time Ukraine’s president-elect—and planned a trip to Kiev to pressure the Ukrainian government to pursue two investigations: one into whether Ukraine, under its previous leader, had sought in 2016 to hurt the Trump campaign and bolster his opponent; and another into diplomatic efforts in the country by Mr. Biden, who is currently leading the Democratic presidential field.
Mr. Giuliani ultimately canceled that trip after his plan was made public. Mr. Trump was aware of the planned meeting, he said.
Mr. Giuliani’s criticism of Mr. Biden centers on the then-vice president’s efforts to seek the ouster of former Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin, who had investigated a private Ukrainian gas company, Burisma Group, of which Hunter Biden was a board member.
Mr. Giuliani has accused Mr. Biden of acting to protect his son, a lawyer who has been involved in several investment and consulting firms, even though Mr. Shokin had already completed his investigation of Burisma Group before he left office.
Mr. Biden has said he sought Mr. Shokin’s ouster because he wasn’t doing enough to investigate corruption. Other countries had also criticized Ukraine for not appropriately addressing the country’s corruption problems.
Yuriy Lutsenko, Ukraine’s prosecutor general at the time, told Bloomberg News in May he had no evidence of wrongdoing by Mr. Biden or his son.
In an interview Thursday evening, Mr. Giuliani said he wasn’t aware whether the whistleblower complaint related to Ukraine. But in a Twitter post later that evening, he defended the possibility that Mr. Trump had urged Mr. Zelensky to investigate his potential campaign opponent.
“A President telling a Pres-elect of a well known corrupt country he better investigate corruption that affects US is doing his job,” Mr. Giuliani wrote.
Mr. Giuliani said earlier this month that Mr. Trump likely would raise the Biden matter with Mr. Zelensky when they meet, saying the matter was “on his mind.” A senior administration official said Friday that the two would discuss how to expand energy cooperation and trade ties.
1) Bush Sr got the John Major government to go rummaging through Bill Clinton's passport file, breaking US and UK law. Nothing much came of it, probably because Bush lost anyway.
2) Nixon shook down the Greek Junta (made up in part of Nazi collaborators) for the cash that helped pay for The Plumbers: his thuggish henchmen who committed multiple felonies.
3) Nixon won the 1968 in large part because the Paris Peace Talks to end the Vietnam War were sabotaged by Tricky Dick's campaign in concert with the government of South Vietnam and a few whack-jobs like Anna Chennault.
So Trump was so desperate to kneecap Biden by framing up his son that he threatened to withhold aid to Ukraine. When the kneecapping failed to commence, he did cut off the aid. If this is true, it's WAY more damning than anything alleged from the 2016 campaign. He's extorting a foreign government to falsely attack a US citizen for political gain. The fact that this was published in the pro-Trump WSJ is even more damning.
If the Dems can't get it up to vote to impeach with this smoking gun, they're not going to impeach, period. In that case, fuck 'em.
