What did Donald Trump do today?
He tried to undo releasing the memo that summarizes his attempt to force the Ukrainian government to interfere in the 2020 election.
Impeachment is now looking increasingly likely after a whirlwind week of revelations about alleged corruption and cover-up over Trump's attempts to get another foreign country to intervene in an election on his behalf. All of this was, of course, put into motion by a formal whistleblower complaint that Trump initially tried to suppress.
Today, Trump insisted that "The Whistleblower’s complaint is completely different and at odds from my actual conversation with the new President of Ukraine."
As it happens, since both the Trump administration's own summary of the call and the whistleblower's complaint are now (mostly) public, this is a testable claim.
COMPLAINT: In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election. ...According to the White House officials who had direct knowledge of the call, the President pressured Mr. Zelenskyy to, inter alia[,] initiate or continue an investigation into the activities of former Vice President Joseph Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.
TRUMP [on call with Zelensky]: 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 [William Barr] would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it... It sounds horrible to me.
COMPLAINT: The President’s personal lawyer, Mr. Rudolph Giuliani, is a central figure in this effort. Attorney General Barr appears to be involved as well.
TRUMP [on call with Zelensky]: I will have Mr. Giuliani give you a call and I am also going to have Attorney General Barr call and we will get to the bottom of it. I'm sure you will figure it out.
COMPLAINT: [Trump pressured Zelensky to] assist in purportedly uncovering that allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election originated in Ukraine , with a specific request that the Ukrainian leader locate and turn over servers used by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and examined by the U.S. cyber security firm Crowdstrike, which initially reported that Russian hackers had penetrated the DNC’s networks in 2016
TRUMP [on call with Zelensky]: 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 with 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.
COMPLAINT: [Trump pressured Zelensky to] meet or speak with two people the President named explicitly as his personal envoys on these matters, Mr. Giuliani and Attorney General Barr, to whom the President referred multiple times in tandem.
TRUMP [on call with Zelensky]: 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 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...
COMPLAINT: The President also praised Ukraine's Prosecutor General, Mr. Yuriy Lutseno, and suggested that Mr. Zelenskyy might want to keep him in his position.
TRUMP [on call with Zelensky]: Good because I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that's really unfair. A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved.
COMPLAINT: Aside from the above-mentioned “cases” purportedly dealing with the Biden family and the 2016 U.S. election, I was told by White House officials that no other “cases” were discussed.
Trump also said that the whistleblower "knew practically NOTHING" about the call. That's actually true: the whistleblower was reporting things he or she was told by other Trump administration officials without having heard the call him or herself. This is a huge problem for Trump, because it means that the whistleblower's other sources—which talk about the larger attempt to strong-arm Ukraine beyond the single phone call—are accurate and direct witnesses to Trump's actions.
So what?
- Things that are true don't become false just because a president needs them to be for political purposes.
- It's illegal and anti-American to try to get foreign governments to sabotage American elections.