1/10. So, these Volker texts obviously re-open the quid pro quo quo questions -- which means we should see the entirety of the texts, not merely the Democrats’ excerpts of them.
foreignaffairs.house.gov/_cache/files/a…
foreignaffairs.house.gov/_cache/files/a…
2/10. The big question is whether the pressure exerted by the Trump administration and members of the State Department was directed toward corruption vs. getting Biden specifically.
3/10. See, e.g., this text: “assuming President Z convinces trump he will investigate/‘get to the bottom of what happened’ in 2016, we will nail down date for visit to Washington.”
4/10. Investigating election interference is legitimate and useful. Biden isn’t mentioned here. The question is whether this is just a facade for “get Biden.” And that seems to be an overread at this point.
5/10. Volker apparently testified that he spent his time telling Giuliani that his suspicions about Biden were based on bad info, too. So that would cut against the notion that Volker and the Trump administration were conditioning aid/help to Ukraine on Biden specifically.
6/10. The reason this matters: Biden’s entire contention about withholding loan guarantees from Ukraine was that it was legitimate in order to push them to stomp out corruption.
7/10. Furthermore, sitting Democratic Senators urged the prosecutor general of Ukraine to cooperate with the Mueller investigation, continue his own ongoing investigations Mueller-probe-related matters, and threatened aid if they didn’t.
8/10. And John Solomon alleges that the Obama DOJ met with the Ukrainians in order to demand anti-corruption efforts that would include an investigation into Paul Manafort.
9/10. So was the Trump administration just trying to “get Biden,” or were they engaged in generalized anti-corruption -- or did Trump perceive Burisma as part of the generalized anti-corruption effort?
10/10. Here’s the bottom line: give us more information. Now. All the texts. Now.
