Thread by @JewhadiTM

The Impeachment Report Is Damning All Right … For Democrats issuesinsights.com/2019/12/04/the…

So the Democrats’ entire impeachment case rests on two pillars. First, that Trump threatened national security by withholding an aid package to Ukraine.

And, second, that he did so in order to get Ukraine’s new president to publicly announce investigations into two supposedly bogus scandals – Joe Biden’s son, and Ukraine’s efforts to keep Trump out of the White House – simply to wound Biden politically.

But read into the report, and then look through the Republican response, and you come to realize that the Democrats fail to support either claim. In fact, in some ways, they make Trump’s case for him.

The report never actually accuses Trump of engaging in bribery.

Despite all the foreboding tones and dark insinuation, the impeachment report never actually accuses Trump of bribery. In fact, the word “bribery” appears only four times in the entire 300-page document:

once when it quotes the impeachment clause of the Constitution, twice in reference to accusations of bribery against Biden, and once in defending the impeachment inquiry itself.

Trump’s actual crime apparently was not following the “script.”

Despite its attempt to paint a picture of Trump as a corrupt leader, the report actually showcases that at the heart of the impeachment are the hurt feelings of career bureaucrats.

The report says that, in advance of Trump’s call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, “NSC staff had prepared a standard package of talking points for the president based on official U.S. policy.

The talking points included recommendations to encourage President Zelensky to continue to promote anti-corruption reforms in Ukraine, a pillar of American foreign policy in the country as far back as its independence in the 1990s when Ukraine first rid itself of Kremlin control.

“This call would deviate significantly from that script.”

Removing a president from office for not sticking to a set of bureaucratic talking points would set an interesting precedent.

The hold on aid wasn’t mysterious after all.

The impeachment report repeatedly claims that the reason for holding back the aid package was a big mystery. But the report itself inadvertently solves that puzzle.

It notes that soon after the Defense Dept put out a press release announcing military aid in 2018, Trump started asking questions, including one “related to international contributions.”

It quotes one official saying that it was “relatively unusual” to receive such questions from the president.

So Trump appears to be guilty of asking tough questions about an aid package, and expressing concerns that other countries aren’t ponying up.

This is an objection Trump has raised repeatedly when it comes to Europe’s free-riding off the U.S., and a complaint he specifically brought up during the call with Zelensky.

The report also manages to make it clear that, apart from anything having to do with Biden or the 2016 elections, Trump didn’t think much of Ukraine, even after it elected a reformist president.

Schiff’s report recounts how after the Ukrainian elections, Ambassadors Gordon Sondland and Kurt Volker, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, and Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson visited the country and came back impressed with the new president.

They “’took turns’ making their case ‘that this is a new crowd, it’s a new president’ in Ukraine who was ‘committed to doing the right things,’ including fighting corruption.”

The impeachment report goes on to say, however, that “President Trump reacted negatively to the positive assessment of Ukraine. Ambassador Volker recalled that President Trump said Ukraine is ‘a terrible place, all corrupt, terrible people’ and was ‘just dumping on Ukraine.’”

Trump’s take might have been wrong, but being wrong about the political situation in another country can’t be grounds for impeachment.

So it appears Trump had two reasons to put the aid package on hold.

Schiff ignores relevant context whenever it conflicts with the narrative.

While Democrats act as though the delay in the military aid package is extremely suspicious, such holds are, in fact, relatively common. There had even been a prior hold on Ukraine aid under Trump.

As the Republican report explains, “Catherine Croft, a former NSC director, offered an example in her deposition, explaining that OMB paused the sale of Javelin missiles to Ukraine in November or December 2017.

This pause, too, was eventually lifted and Ukraine received the missiles.”

And while the Dems insist that “The allegations about... Biden were without evidence, and the US Intelligence Community had unanimously determined that Russia, not Ukraine, interfered in the 2016 election to help ... Trump,” Trump was well within his rights to raise these issues.

After all, there really was something sleazy going on with the fact that Hunter Biden had taken an extremely lucrative position on the board of a corrupt Ukrainian energy company while his father was Obama’s point man on Ukraine.

And despite the Democrats’ insistence that there is no evidence Ukraine tried to derail Trump’s election, there is ample evidence that it did.

As the Republican response correctly points out, “Democrats have posited a false choice: that influence in the 2016 election is binary – it could have been conducted by Russia or by Ukraine, but not both. This is nonsense.”

The report buries Ambassador Volker’s impeachment-damning statement to the committee.

From the Republican report, we learn that Volker, “the key American interlocutor trusted by the Ukrainian government,” told investigators that the Ukrainians “never raised concerns to him” about the hold on military aid “until after the pause became public in late August.”

In other words, AFTER Trump’s supposed quid-pro-quo call with Zelensky.

Suffice it say that even Democrats must realize that Schiff and company have only dug their impeachment hole deeper with this remarkably thin and tendentious report.