The NYT reported tonight that Bill Taylor, the top US Diplomat in Ukraine, texted Sondland, the US ambassador to Europe, and the US special envoy to Ukraine Volker, saying:
“I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.”
This appears on its face to be a #smokingtext showing that Trump’s desire to coerce Ukraine into telling lies about Biden was the crucial motivating factor behind the Trump administration’s blockage of the military assistance to Ukraine.
I realize that Trump’s solicitation of Ukraine’s help in the campaign was illegal on its face, whatever else was happening with regard to aid. And it’s important to keep hammering that point home.
But it is an additional abuse of power that the Trump administration, as illustrated by this #smokingtext, was using the aid as a stick to extort a foreign country into fabricating lies about a political opponent of Trump’s. It’s powerful additional evidence that there was indeed a quid quo pro.
Because of this, it would probably be better to break these two aspects into separate articles of impeachment. The first would impeach Trump for soliciting interference in US elections from a foreign power. The second would impeach Trump for withholding Congressionally appropriated funds from a country in order to extort political advantage. It might have been one scheme, but these are two separate execrable crimes.
I do believe it’s important for the House to impeach on multiple counts of obstruction of justice as well (Mueller, Ukraine, etc.), for numerous acts of wanton bigotry and cruelty (as Congressperson Green has called for), for firing civil servants for political reasons, for illegal payouts to former partners (and obstruction of justice in covering that up too), for emoluments clause violations, for violations of whistleblower protection laws, for illegally classifying documents, for lies that demean the office running into the thousands, and whatever else I might be forgetting or the House digs up in the next few weeks. That way, the House is making it clear that these behaviors are unacceptable for future Presidents. Also, adding additional articles provides some cover for Republicans who might want to vote against some articles of impeachment while voting to convict on others.
It only takes conviction on one article to remove a President from office.
Friday, Oct 4, 2019 · 6:54:42 AM +00:00
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samdiener
Update 1: Democrat leaders in Congress released 25 pages of texts that expand on this tonight after meeting with Volker. Among other sources, CNN has the copies.
Update 2: Ex-ambassador Michael McFaul on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow’s show tonight highlighted the importance of this text as a clear indicator of an illegal quid quo pro.
Update 3: The NYT’s first story did not highlight this text. After the release of the expanded texts, the NYT did another story, updated at 1:05 AM ET, examining the meaning of these texts. According to these texts and this reporting, Bill Taylor was witnessing and objecting to the quid quo pro, and Trump’s envoys were responding to him saying, in essence, stop texting about this, let’s talk about this on the phone, and trying to pretend that there was no quid quo pro.