What we know now

Donald Trump is the master of the fog machine. After three years in office, he is expert at using distractions and dissembling to divert Americans’ attention from what matters. The public must step out of that fog and focus. Just one month into their impeachment inquiry, House Democrats have exposed machinations that at any other time would be compelling grounds for a president’s removal.

We know that President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has been pushing a shadow foreign policy in Ukraine for the better part of a year, pressuring the country to open investigations into Joe Biden and the 2016 hacked D.N.C. server.

We know that Giuliani associates (and, reportedly, members of Trump’s expanded legal team) Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman have been indicted for trying to funnel Russian money into U.S. elections.

We know that Trump via the Office of Management and Budget placed an indefinite block on $391 million in Congress-authorized Ukraine military aid.

We know that William Taylor, our top diplomat in Ukraine, saw repeated and overwhelming evidence of a clear quid pro quo, and attempts to conceal it. Per Taylor, U.S. Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland, acting on Trump’s orders, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky had to announce on CNN that his country was opening investigations into Democrats before the U.S. would agree either to let Zelensky meet Trump or release military aid. “Everything” was said to be contingent on this trade.

We know that Ukraine officials knew about the freeze in military aid in early August, contra Trump’s claims.

We know the aid was only released on Sept. 11 — the day after national security adviser John Bolton quit or was fired and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff wrote to ask acting Director of National Intelligence Joe Maguire to release the whistleblower complaint that started peeling away layers of the scandal.

We know that acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney plainly admitted a quid pro quo in his Oct. 17 televised press conference.

We know that Zelensky expressed concern to advisers even before taking office in May about Trump pressuring him to investigate Biden.

We know that former U.S. Ambassador to the Ukraine Marie Yovanovich was targeted by Giuliani and his Ukraine henchmen because she was seen as an obstacle to the plot.

We know that the record of the July 25 Trump-Zelensky phone call was spirited away by White House lawyers onto a secret server reserved for politically embarrassing conversations between Trump and other world leaders.

This is only what we know so far.