This past week, President Donald Trump faced another round of public impeachment hearings as Democratic investigators zeroed in on allegations including bribery. As the story goes, Trump sought to hold already approved military aid for Ukraine until the country investigated his domestic political opponents, including not just the Bidens but also the Democratic National Committee (DNC). With absolutely no basis in reality, Trump has claimed that the DNC gave their computer server to a Ukrainian company — and in a Fox News interview this week, the forever bumbling president essentially confirmed that allegation was behind a bribery scheme.
As he explained it, he was unwilling to give up money for Ukraine until the country investigated “corruption,” but as he also explained it, that “corruption” means something very specific — his made-up story that Democrats gave their email server to Ukraine and are thereby hiding real culprits behind 2016 election meddling — or something.
On Friday morning, Trump told the hosts of Fox & Friends:
‘The FBI went in, and [the Democrats] told them — get out of here, we’re not giving it to you. They gave the server to Crowdstrike, or whatever it’s called. Which is a company owned by a very wealthy Ukrainian. And I still want to see that server. You know, the FBI’s never gotten that server. That’s a big part of this whole thing. Why did they give it to a Ukrainian company?’
Crowdstrike, who does security for both Democrats and Republicans, is not a Ukrainian company.
After the above, host Steve Doocy uneasily asked:
‘Are you sure they did that? Are you sure they gave it to Ukraine?’
Trump replied:
‘Well, that’s what the word is. That’s what I asked, actually, in my phone call, if you know. I mean, I asked it very point-blank. Because we’re looking for corruption. There’s tremendous corruption. We’re looking for — why should we be giving hundreds of millions of dollars to countries when there’s this kind of corruption?’
The “corruption” that Trump is going on about simply does not exist.
Watch:
Remember, “Crowdstrike” is the conspiracy theory that Ukraine and the DNC framed Russia. Here’s President Trump again pushing this claim, supported by Republicans: that Russia is innocent, didn’t interfere in the 2016 election. Who did it? Ukraine and the DNC. pic.twitter.com/mmSjgKTQJq
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) November 22, 2019
One of the impeachment inquiry witnesses this past week explicitly addressed the Republican idea that Ukraine rather than Russia had a hand in 2016 election meddling. Former Trump adviser Fiona Hill bluntly told Congress:
‘Some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that is being perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.’
Trump doesn’t seem to care.
Hill’s condemnation is definitely not the only piece of noteworthy info that came out last week. E.U. Ambassador Gordon Sondland explicitly said in his own Congressional testimony that there was, in fact, a quid pro quo plot targeting Ukraine, which is essentially the same revelation Trump (inadvertently?) made on Fox News this week. Trump expended a lot of energy trying to combat Sondland’s claims — he shouted at reporters at one point for minutes on end — but the evidence is straightforward.
