Feds must turn over Ukraine info
investigators that Trump explicitly held up the security aid to strong-arm Zelensky into publicly committing to investigating baseless corruption allegations about Biden’s son, Hunter, and debunked claims that antiUkrainians interfered in the 2016 election to help Hillary Clinton.
Taylor said Trump similarly threatened to not invite Zelensky to the White House if he didn’t announce Biden and 2016 investigations.
After bipartisan outrage at home, Trump eventually released the U.S. aid to Ukraine on Sept. 11, ostensibly without Zelensky launching investigations. Ukraine relies on the aid to counter Russian aggression.
Taylor’s bombshell testimony prompted even some powerful Republicans to flinch.
“The picture coming out of it based on the reporting that we’ve seen is, yeah, I would say not a good one,” South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the No. 2 Republican in the upper chamber, told reporters Wednesday.
But Trump suggested on Twitter that, even if he held up military aid for political purposes, it couldn’t amount to quid pro quo since the Ukrainians weren’t aware of his having put the brakes on the crucial U.S. assistance.
“You can’t have a quid pro quo with no quo,” Trump posted.
As if on cue, The New York Times reported within hours of Trump’s tweet that Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials found about the aid suspension in early August, about a month before Trump released it.
The Times report, which cites records and interviews with unnamed officials, says Ukraine found out the holdup was not a bureaucratic glitch, adding weight to the Trump pressure campaign to launch probes into his political opponents.
Another report on Wednesday said that Zelensky was aware of Trump’s hope for investigations as early as May, shortly after he took office, and months earlier that was known.
The Associated Press said Zelensky held a May 7 meeting with advisers at which he brought up Rudy Giuliani’s push for dirt on Joe Biden and a probe into the 2016 election.
Massachusetts Rep. Stephen Lynch, a Democratic member of the House Oversight Committee, said Trump has opened himself up to impeachment even if the quid pro quo element can’t be substantiated.
“I think it was here … I think that will be proven,” Lynch said of quid pro quo. “However, merely soliciting a foreign government to do a political hit job on your political opponent in a U.S. election is a violation of the law.”
A federal judge stepped in Wednesday where House Democrats have been unsuccessful so far.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ordered the State Department to turn over Ukraine-related records — including communications between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (inset) and President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
The order came in response to an emergency motion from American Oversight, a government watchdog group that filed a Freedom of Information Law suit for the records earlier this month.
Cooper gave the State Department
30 days to start forking over the records, which relate to any participation by agency officials in Trump’s attempt to pressure Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden and other Democrats before the 2020 election.
Giuliani, who spearheaded Trump’s pressure campaign in Ukraine, told the Daily News earlier this month that he communicated directly with Pompeo as part of his campaign to unearth dirt on Democrats.
Democrats leading the House impeachment inquiry have subpoenaed the State Department, Pompeo and Giuliani for Ukraine records, but have come up emptyhanded so far as the Trump administration has largely refused to cooperate in the inquiry.