Tornado Alley (PROG)

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Trump’s Incriminating Conversation With the Ukrainian President

"Phone Call Showed Only a Slice of Trump’s Obsession With Ukraine
"The Realist Case for Impeachment"

Reposted to correct that reference.

The White House said a transcript of the call would be exculpatory—but the summary it released only adds to the problems facing Trump.

Sep 25, 2019
David A. Graham
Staff writer at The Atlantic

[...]

the really crazy stuff. Trump begins speaking about the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election:

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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 guess you have one of your wealthy people … The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. 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 said 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.
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[...]

Zelensky seems to deflect the specifics of the question, but he assures the president that Trump has friends in Kiev and that the Ukrainian government is eager to work with the United States. He also promises to have an investigation. Trump takes that as an invitation to delve into another conspiracy theory, this one about former Vice President Joe Biden:

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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.
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This misrepresents the situation badly. The prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, was accused by both the international community and people within Ukraine, including his former deputy, of being overly lax in policing corruption. The United States, through Biden, worked to have him fired because he was too weak a prosecutor. Trump continues:

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Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. 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.
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Here, Trump is bringing in both his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and the attorney general of the United States, trying to work both official and private channels to dig up dirt on the Bidens. He adds:

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The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to let you know that.
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Here, Trump is referring to Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, a career Foreign Service officer who was suddenly sacked, reportedly after Giuliani raised a series of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about her. Trump says:

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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.
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That finishes the main substance of the call. Twice in the closing minutes of the call Trump says that he will have Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr call Zelensky. It’s not clear whether Barr ever spoke with Zelensky.

The call is bizarre on several levels. First, the United States has legitimate interests in Ukraine, but Trump is using his conversation with that country’s president to pursue his pet, unsubstantiated conspiracy theories.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/what-the-transcript-of-trumps-insane-call-with-the-ukrainian-president-showed/598780/