There was a lot of mutual buttering up in President Donald Trump’s telephone conversation with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Then came the ask: Trump wanted Joe Biden and his son Hunter investigated — and offered to have the U.S. attorney general help.
That disclosure in a declassified “Memorandum of telephone conversation” released Wednesday reflected dreadful judgment by the president. It also left Americans debating whether Trump’s conduct amounted to an extortion plot — the “high crimes and misdemeanors” that would qualify as an impeachable offense.
The memorandum has Trump citing Biden in a passage that many congressional Democrats saw as a self-serving quest to undercut a Democratic presidential candidate: Trump did a pivot in the 30-minute conversation to urge Zelenskiy to work with his private lawyer, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and Attorney General William Barr, to “find out whatever you can” about the Bidens’ dealings in Ukraine. But there’s also ambiguity in the conversation. Trump doesn’t explicitly propose a quid pro quo, such as a deliverance of U.S. aid in return for the Ukrainians dishing dirt on the Bidens.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had announced Tuesday that she had launched an impeachment inquiry against Trump focused in part on that July 25 phone conversation. Pelosi framed Trump’s actions as a breach of constitutional responsibility because he allegedly called on a foreign power to intervene in his reelection effort by going after Biden and his son.
Pelosi took that historic action against the president before the call memo and other evidence had been disclosed. We know an unnamed whistleblower reported suspicions of wrongdoing to the intelligence community inspector general, and we know the Trump administration stopped that report from reaching Congress. But as for details? Trump’s decision to release the phone call represented an early step in his confrontation with Democrats.
The memo about the call is five pages long and reads like a complete transcript, but it’s not. A footnote to the document says it represents contemporaneous notes and recollections of White House and National Security Council personnel who were listening in.
The call began with Trump congratulating Zelenskiy on his “fantastic” election victory. Zelenskiy reciprocated by praising Trump’s political skills.
Then Trump reminded Zelenskiy that Ukraine doesn’t have a better friend in the world than the U.S. “We do a lot for Ukraine. We spend a lot of effort and a lot of time. Much more than the European countries,” Trump said. Later came the troubling pivot by Trump, casual in tone. “The other thing,” the president said, “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 (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.”
Trump was wrong to make that request. He asked the leader of another government to take actions that could undercut a leading Democratic candidate for president. That said, not all bad conduct by a president qualifies as impeachable. The questions that, this week, have abruptly confronted Americans and their members of Congress: Does Trump’s behavior here merit removal from office? Or are Democrats exaggerating this incident?
Relative to the impeachment inquiry, the most important takeaway from the memorandum is that it’s only the first of what could be many pieces of evidence. If the whistleblower whose concerns exposed this Ukraine episode to public view has more extensive evidence, we hope that surfaces promptly.
Which leaves us where we were before reading the call memo: withholding final judgment about Trump and Ukraine until we learn much more.
That’s not a satisfying position, especially to partisans who’ve decided that Trump should be impeached or elected to a second term. An impeachment probe is a long and serious process. This investigation included.
— Chicago Tribune