THREAD: 'Arms for dirt' appears to be only a small part of the Trump-Giuliani agenda in Ukraine. Beyond personal commercial motives, and promoting a counter-narrative on RU election interference, Giuliani was pursuing, at Trump's behest, a broad, pro-Russian agenda.
As I've written, this included an effort to compromise, and so 'break,' the new Zelensky administration, opening the way for restoration of the corrupt pro-Russian order that prevailed before the Dignity Revolution of 2014 (the side that employed Manafort/Gates/Kilimnik).
It seems likely also to have aimed at pressuring Ukraine into a 'peace agreement' w/ Russia that would (i) weaken Ukrainian sovereignty (hastening its relapse into the Russian 'orbit'), and (ii) render moot continued U.S. sanctions against Russia, allowing for their removal.
Testimony of Yovanovitch, Taylor, Hill and others makes clear that the Trump agenda pursued in Ukraine by Giuliani and "crew" actively *subverted* official U.S. foreign policy, not to mention sundry laws.
To that extent, the 'shadow foreign policy' we now associate w/ Giuliani's piratic operations in Ukraine remind me of Iran-Contra. There, as here, a WH bent on circumventing Congressional funding restrictions (Boland Amendment), and
conducting a secret foreign policy (funding the Contras), circumvented 'regular' channels and did its dirty work clandestinely. Ironic that AG Barr was responsible for Pres. GHW Bush's pardons of many of the 14 Reagan Administration officials eventually convicted in Iran-Contra.
While we wait for convictions in the current case (and they will come), we *must* look beyond 'arms for dirt' and 'Crowdstrike,' to understand that the Trump-Giuliani agenda in Ukraine was fundamentally in service of Russia.
The narrow bore focus of the impeachment inquiry on 2020 related 'extortion,' abuse of power, etc. is understandable: it's bite sized and easily digested. It gathers votes. But it risks missing the big picture. We're tugging, so far, at only a few threads in a large carpet.
