The longer House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) holds off from sending the articles of impeachment against Donald Trump to the Senate, the more information that can become unearthed. That is to the Democrats’ advantage. Now, a combustible new revelation just exploded onto the scene.
It appeared from the beginning that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was intent upon a streamlined trial. Apparently, he planned on no witnesses or documents to muck up the third impeachment trial in the history of the U.S.
New revelations regarding the president’s “corrupt freezing of military aid to Ukraine” seem to make certain McConnell’s plan will falter and will result in more testimony emerging according to The Washington Post.
By June, acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney was involved in freezing the direly-needed, Congress-approved military aid to Ukraine. The country has been actively fighting the Russians’ invasion, so this was a matter of national security for both Ukraine and the U.S.
Mulvaney and one of his top aides Robert Blair were concerned that withholding the $391 million in military funds would indicate that Trump was supporting the Russians. That was a logical conclusion.
For months, the Pentagon had been urging Trump to release the funds. Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and former National Security Adviser John Bolton all had been working to get the president to release the funds. The tried to explain that it was in the national interest to release the frozen aide.
All to no avail. Trump stubbornly held tightly to the funds. He argued that Ukraine had a history of “corruption.” What POTUS had in mind was for the emerging democracy to announce a fake investigation with the “results” fulfilling two objectives. The first was to smear the man he considered his top opponent in the 2020 presidential election: Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
Trump would not budge. It was as if his decision was set in stone. He referred to Ukraine’s corruption. His second objective would end up showing that Russia was not guilty of interfering in the 2016 presidential election. Corruption did not even enter into the conversation.
The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) attorneys came up with a bizarre legal argument. That argument claimed that the president of these United States had the power to “override Congress appropriation of the aid, to get around the law,” meaning that Trump trumped the House.
A political appointee at the OMB, Michael Duffey, tried in vain to get the money released and shift the blame away from the White House. A Pentagon official said that she was “speechless” over the way the events unfolded.
Then too, Duffey froze the aid in a most unusual way. He would not tell the Pentagon’s top-tier officials why the president wanted the money held back. Instead, he just withheld the money and sent a strong message to stay quiet about the money.
The reason that was a problem for McConnell was the facts had a funny way of exposing themselves. The media pressure on the Kentucky senator has become increasingly strong:
‘If Republicans bear the brunt of media pressure to explain why they don’t want to hear from witnesses, that risks highlighting their true rationale: They adamantly fear new revelations precisely because they know Trump is guilty — and that this corrupt scheme is almost certainly much worse than we can currently surmise.’
‘That possibility is underscored by the Times report, a chronology of Trump’s decision to withhold aid to a vulnerable ally under assault while he and his henchmen extorted Ukraine into carrying out his corrupt designs.’
The report showed that the corruption went all throughout the administration from cabinet members and even to McConnell. Of course, the Ukrainian president would not say he was under pressure. He knew the source of his military aide. It was just too risky.
- What makes all this new information really damning, however, is that many of these officials who were directly involved with Trump’s freezing of aid are the same ones Trump blocked from appearing before the House impeachment inquiry.
2. Even if McConnell succeeds in his quick-and-dirty trial, the information could leak later exposing the corruption.
That provided some clarity into the situation. McConnell has limited the information the Democrats could ever see. Yet, the only way he could do that was by keeping Mulvaney, Bolton, Duffey, and Blair from testifying:
‘We now have a much clearer glimpse into the murky depths of just how much more these officials know about the scheme — and just how much McConnell and Trump are determined to make sure we don’t ever learn. That’s so indefensible that it might even breach the levee of the media’s both-sidesing tendencies.’
The Mueller Report Adventures: In Bite-Sizes on this Facebook page. These quick, two-minute reads interpret the report in normal English for busy people. Mueller Bite-Sizes uncovers what is essentially a compelling spy mystery. Interestingly enough, Mueller Bite-Sizes can be read in any order.
