Another Day, Another Scandal. What the "Trump-Ukraine Collusion" Is Really About by Daniel Lazare!
(2019-09-25 at 14:55:43 )

Another Day, Another Scandal. What the "Trump-Ukraine Collusion" Is Really About by Daniel Lazare

This is soooooo boring.

For nearly a week, Washington,D.C. has been consumed by reports that Donald Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to dig up dirt on Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden.

The furor began on Wednesday, Sept. 18, when the Washington Post disclosed that President Trump had said something to an unknown foreign leader that "was so alarming that a United States intelligence official who had worked at the White House went to the inspector general of the intelligence community."

Two days later, the Wall Street Journal reported that the foreign leader was Zelensky and that President Trump had asked him "about eight times" in the course of a single phone conversation to look into allegations that then-Vice President Biden had pushed for the removal of a public prosecutor investigating a Ukrainian company that employed his son, Hunter.

A day after that, Mr. Biden complained that Donald Trump was trying to "smear me," while on Sunday, Adam Schiff, Democratic chairman of the House intelligence committee, declared that President Trump might be guilty of "the most profound violation of the presidential oath of office .. during just about any presidency."

From initial report to the United States of Americas greatest scandal ever in just four days - surely this was some sort of Washington,D.C. speed record.

Since the moment Donald Trump was elected, Democrats have been searching for "the Big One," as New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd put it, the scandal "that is going to finally bring Donald Trump down" - and now at last they found it.

Of course, Democrats said the same about Russiagate, the scandal that dominated headlines for two and a half years but fizzled when special prosecutor Robert Mueller said he was unable to come up with evidence "that members of the Donald Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government."

But now that President Trump stood accused of conspiring or coordinating with the Ukrainian government - or at least trying to - surely the Big One was finally at hand.

But it is not.

One reason is that there is no sign of a quid pro quo. The Washington Post suggested in its initial report that the purpose of the July 25 phone call was to "manipulate the Ukrainian government into helping President Trumps reelection campaign."

The means, supposedly, was $250 million in military aid that he was threatening to withhold if the Ukraine failed to cooperate. But the Wall Street Journals source specifically denied that President Trump had threatened a cut-off while the New York Times reported that a decision to end military aid - subsequently revoked - had actually occurred weeks earlier.

Another reason for skepticism is that charges of a smear job clearly misplaced. If anyones activities are suspicious, it is Mr. Bidens, and President Trump can hardly be blamed for wanting to get to the bottom of them.

To briefly recap: in February 2014, a United States-backed coup spearheaded by ultra-rightists sent Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych fleeing and installed billionaire Petro Poroshenko in his place.

This was bad news for a wealthy Yanukovych supporter named Mykola Zlochevsky who was widely accused of corruption and was in danger of losing all or some of his holdings. In an attempt to smooth things over with the United States of Americans, Zlochevsky appointed Hunter Biden to a lucrative post with Burisma Holdings, a natural-gas company he founded in 2002.

Mr. Hunter had just been discharged from the United States Navy after testing positive for cocaine. He had no experience in the natural-gas business and knew nothing about the Ukraine. But he got the job anyway along with a salary of $50,000 a month.

But when the Ukrainian prosecutor general launched an investigation into Burisma, the Obama administration demanded that Viktor Shokin, the man who took over the office a year later, be removed. Indeed, Mr. Biden bragged that he threatened to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees during a visit to Kiev if Mr. Poroshenko did not do as he was told.

"I said, -We are leaving in six hours,-" he said last year. "If the prosecutor is not fired, you are not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch, he got fired."

If anyone is guilty of a quid pro quo, it would seem to be Mr. Biden.

Questions remain. Washington,D.C. says it wanted Mr. Shokin because he was impeding the Ukraines anti-corruption drive and that it pushed for someone more vigorous even though the results for Burisma might have been negative.

But the New York Times says the company was pleased by Mr. Shokins dismissal, and that a year later it was able to reach an amicable settlement with his successor. Hunter Bidens job was safe.

Still, profiting off a family connection in this manner is plainly corrupt, and Mr. Biden is obviously attempting to deflect attention from his own misdeeds by screaming about President Trump. The upshot is yet another tedious pseudo-scandal in which Democrats will only succeed in embarrassing themselves.

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