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Much worse than I imagined

Published by digby on September 25, 2019

Much worse than I imagined

by digby

It’s actually way worse than we thought:

President Trump urged the president of Ukraine to contact Attorney General William P. Barr about opening a potential corruption investigation connected to former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., according to a transcript of a July phone call at the center of accusations that Mr. Trump pressured a foreign leader to find dirt on a political rival.

“I would like you to do us a favor,” Mr. Trump said in response to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine raising the prospect of acquiring military equipment from the United States. The president then also asked for another inquiry: that the Ukrainians examine an unsubstantiated theory about stolen Democratic emails.
[…]
During the call, Mr. Trump told Mr. Zelensky that he should be in touch with both Mr. Barr and the president’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, according to the transcript released by the White House on Wednesday.

“There is a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution, and a lot of people want to find out about that,” Mr. Trump said to Mr. Zelensky during the call, according to the transcript. “So whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great.”
[…]
Mr. Trump specifically asked his Ukrainian counterpart to come to the aid of the United States by looking into the unsubstantiated theory pushed by Mr. Giuliani holding that Ukrainians had some role in the emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee.

“I would like to have the attorney general call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of that,” Mr. Trump said on the call, also referencing Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel who investigated Russia’s election sabotage. “Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it, if that’s possible.”

Mr. Trump’s allies argue that he was not exerting improper pressure on Mr. Zelensky, but mentioned Mr. Barr because the Justice Department was already reviewing the origins of the inquiry into Russia’s 2016 election meddling.

The president’s mentions of Mr. Barr and Mr. Giuliani were the most striking part of a half-hour conversation in which the two men discussed a series of issues. But several times, Mr. Trump steered the conversation back to Mr. Barr, Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Biden.

And by the way:

The Justice Department also said Wednesday that it received a criminal referral from the Intelligence Community Inspector General in late August to investigate whether the President’s push for Ukraine to investigate Biden was a violation of campaign finance law.
DOJ declined to bring a case because it found that asking the Ukrainians to investigate Biden was not something of monetary value, and therefore did not run afoul of campaign finance laws.

The Justice Department’s examination centered on the July call. Prosecutors interviewed White house officials involved in producing the transcript to establish it was a reliable record of the call. No other interviews were done. The FBI received a separate referral from the inspector general but deferred to the DOJ criminal division which was doing its analysis, according to a senior Justice Department official.

Barr was also not recused from handling the issue despite the fact that his name comes up in Trump’s call with Zelensky.

Barr is an accomplice.

Here are the six most shocking elements of the transcript:

1. Trump asked for an investigation into the Bidens. 

The President: “The other thing. There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it … It sounds horrible to me.”

In this passage, Mr. Trump pushed the new Ukrainian president to get his country’s prosecutor to open an investigation into former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son, Hunter. In May, Ukraine’s top prosecutor had said there is no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens to investigate.

When he was vice president, Mr. Biden had pushed the Ukrainian government in 2015 to fire its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who was widely seen as an obstacle to reform because he failed to bring corruption cases. At the time, Mr. Biden’s son sat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma Holdings, that was the subject of an investigation that Mr. Shokin’s office had long left dormant.

In 2018, Mr. Biden talked about his effort to get Mr. Shokin removed — carrying out the Obama administration’s policy — at a Council on Foreign Relations event, and Mr. Trump’s supporters have used a brief video clip from those remarks as part of their insinuations that the vice president was trying to protect Burisma Holdings from prosecution. Mr. Biden did not portray his effort to get Mr. Shokin out as stopping any prosecution of Burisma Holdings.

2. Trump alluded to American aid, while not explicitly linking his request to unfreezing it, the document shows. 

The President: “I will say that we do a lot for Ukraine. We spend a lot of effort and a lot of time.”

At the time of this call, Mr. Trump was holding back hundreds of millions of dollars in military assistance to Ukraine that Congress had appropriated to help that country fend off Russian aggression. The two leaders did not directly refer to Mr. Trump’s freezing of the aid or whether he would unfreeze it. However, Mr. Trump referred to large-scale American assistance to Ukraine in this passage, and several sentences later, Mr. Trump added:

The President: … “but the United States has been very, very good to Ukraine. I wouldn’t say that it’s reciprocal, necessarily, because things are happening that are not good. But the United States has been very very good to Ukraine.”

At this point in the call, Mr. Trump brought up the idea of reciprocity, suggesting that the United States has been good to Ukraine even though something Ukraine has done is not good. The next thing Mr. Trump said — after Mr. Zelensky responded to this statement — was to ask for investigations.

3. Zelensky agreed to pursue an inquiry into the Bidens. 

President Zelensky: “Since we have won the absolute majority in our Parliament the next prosecutor general will be 100% my person, my candidate who will be approved by the parliament and will start as a new prosecutor in September. He or she will look into the situation, specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue. The issue of the investigation of the case is actually the issue of making sure to restore the honesty we will take care of that and will work on the investigation of the case. On top of that, I would kindly ask you if you have any additional information that you can provide to us, it would be very helpful for the investigation to make sure that we administer justice in our country.”

In May, Ukraine’s top prosecutor at the time had said there is no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens for him to investigate. In this passage, Mr. Zelensky promises to do what Mr. Trump is asking — launch an investigation into the Bidens — but also asks Mr. Trump if he can provide any information for Ukrainian investigators to look at.

4. Trump said Barr would call the Ukrainian president about another investigation. 

The President: “I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation in Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike … I guess you have one of your wealthy people … The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible.”

Mr. Trump appears to be referencing an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory pushed by Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, that Ukraine had some involvement in the emails stolen from Democratic National Committee.

Mr. Giuliani said in a previously unpublished portion of an interview with The New York Times in April that he was in touch with people “who said that the Ukrainians were the ones who did the hacking,” then participated in an effort to blame the Russian government and link it to the Trump campaign.

The special counsel’s report, which Mr. Trump disparages here, made clear that Russian military officers hacked the D.N.C. mail server. There is no evidence that the Ukrainians were involved. But in May, Attorney General William P. Barr launched his own investigation into the Russia investigation and its origins.

5. Trump cast aspersions on Western Europe and Germany as Ukrainian allies. 

The President: “Germany does almost nothing for you. All they do is talk and I think it’s something that you should really ask them about. When I was speaking to Angela Merkel she talks Ukraine, but she doesn’t do anything. A lot of European countries are the same way so I think it’s something you want to look at but the United States has been very good to Ukraine.”

The geopolitical fate of Ukraine, a former Soviet republic, has been up for grabs. Mr. Zelensky has expressed interest in having his country join NATO, and many in Ukraine want their future to be oriented toward Western Europe. But Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, has been trying to bring it back into Moscow’s orbit.

In recent years, Russia has annexed the Crimea and invaded Ukraine’s eastern territory, where many Ukrainian citizens are ethnically Russian and where pro-Russian separatists are strong. In this portion of the phone call, Mr. Trump suggests Ukraine cannot count on Europe and casts aspersions on German assistance.

6. Trump portrayed Giuliani, his personal lawyer, as an envoy. 

The President: “Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what’s happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great. The former ambassador from the United the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news I just want to let you know that.”

Here the president is pushing Mr. Zelensky to deal directly with Mr. Giuliani, his personal lawyer and close ally, while disparaging the United States’ Senate-confirmed ambassador.

Mr. Giuliani has repeatedly pushed conspiracy theories about the Bidens and encouraged the Ukrainian government to ramp up investigations into them. He told The New York Times in May that he was doing so “because that information will be very, very helpful to my client, and may turn out to be helpful to my government.”

At the time of this call, Mr. Giuliani had recently spoken on the phone with a top representative of the new Ukrainian president, and would soon meet him in person in Madrid. Mr. Giuliani has said he was acting on his own as a private citizen, but with the knowledge and assistance of the State Department.

Meanwhile, in Bizarro World, Trump and the right insists that he’s been totally exonerated.

I hope the media will resist the pressure it is about to receive from the right wing to see this as no big deal.  They are working feverishly to normalize this mafia-style shakedown of a foreign leader for personal gain.

Jesus .

You can read the whole transcript here.

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