Some people
in Congress and in the media had the temerity to suggest that it might be an
invitation to a hostile foreign power to interfere in the 2016 election to implore,
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that
are missing.” The president defended
himself by explaining that he said it as a joke. “Of course I was being
sarcastic.” (Interview on Fox and Friends.); "[I]n jest and sarcastically,
as was apparent to any objective observer." (Written answers to Mueller
questions.) At a campaign rally he made
fun of the media for not realizing, that it was all a joke.
In a post of
June 9 this year, I examined Trump’s defense and the “in jest” defense to
solicitation charges more generally. I was skeptical. Subsequent developments,
including the recent dramatic developments seem to confirm that skepticism was
not amiss.
On June 12,
2019, when asked by George Stephanopoulos what he would do if a foreign power
offered information on an opponent, Trump replied, “There’s nothing wrong with
listening. If somebody called from a country [such as] Norway, [saying] we have
information on your opponent. Oh, I think I’d want to hear it. It’s not an
interference. They have information. I think I’d take it.”
Memorandum of
the telephone conversation between Trump and the President of the Ukraine on
July 25, 2019:
The
President: . . . [W]e
do a lot for Ukraine. We spend a lot of effort and a lot of time. Much more
than the European countries are doing .
. .[T]the United States has been very very good to Ukraine. I wouldn't say that
it's reciprocal necessarily because things are happening that are not good but the
United States has been very very good to Ukraine.
President
Zelenskyy [sic]: . . . I'm very grateful to you for that
because the United States is doing quite a lot for Ukraine. . . I would also like to thank you for your great
support in the area of defense. We are ready to continue to cooperate for the
next steps specifically we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the
United States for defense purposes. [The
purchase of which was awaiting aid funds that Trump had put on hold, although
this was not touched on in the memorandum.]
T: I would like you to do us a favor
though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about
it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with
Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike.... I would like to have the Attorney General
call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you
saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man
named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it
started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it's very important that you do it,
if that's possible.
Z: Yes it is very important for me and
everything that you just mentioned earlier. . .. I will personally tell you
that one of my assistants spoke with Mr. Giuliani just recently and we are
hoping very much that Mr. Giuliani will be able to travel to Ukraine and we
will meet once he comes to Ukraine. I just wanted to assure you once again that
you have nobody but friends around us. . . I also wanted to tell you that we
are friends. We are great friends and you Mr. President have friends in our country
. . .
T: Good because I heard you had a prosecutor who was very
good and he was shut down and that's really unfair. A lot of people are talking
about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some
very bad people involved. Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. . . . . I
will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows
what's happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that
would be great. . . .. The other thing, 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 would be great.
Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look
into it... It sounds horrible to me.
Z: I wanted to tell you about the prosecutor. First of all,
I understand and I'm knowledgeable about the situation. Since we have won the
absolute majority in our Parliament, the next prosecutor general will be 100%
my person, my candidate. . . He or she will look into the situation, specifically
to the company that you mentioned in this issue.
* * *
Z: . .
. last time I traveled to the United States, . . . I stayed at the Trump Tower.
I will talk to them and I hope to see them again in the future . . ., I also
want to ensure you that we will be very serious about the case and will work on
the investigation. . .
T: Good. Well, thank you very much and I appreciate that. I will tell
Rudy and Attorney General Barr to call . . .
Crowdstrike
is a cybersecurity firm that examined the DNC servers and their hacking, concluded
that the Russians were behind the hacking, and gave all the data it recovered from
the servers to the FBI. Crowdstrike also did work for the RNC. There is now a
conspiracy theory of the right fringe that Crowdstrike wrongly fingered the
Russians and that a DNC server is to be found in Ukraine. If the conspiracy
theory were correct, then an investigation of the server and the Ukranian
connection would show the innocence of the Russians and confirm that the
Democrats hacked themselves. Giuliani has stated that he had conversations with
Trump about this general issue.
So Trump
asked Zelensky to talk with Barr and Giuliani, and have his 100% loyal
investigator trace through the Ukrainian connection to Crowdstrike. That Trump
hopes the Ukrainian prosecutor will help discredit the “nonsense” of the
Mueller Investigation is patent.
In addition
Trump pressed for an investigation of Biden son and father. Neither Zelensky nor anyone else could doubt
that he was hoping for Ukrainian confirmation that what Biden did was “horrible.”
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