(Real Clear Politics)
The Three Main Questions About Ukraine and ImpeachmentAP Photo/Andrew Harnik
Democrats are ecstatic over the latest closed-door testimony by U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor. They say it damns the president.
We’ll have to take their word for it -- or not. For us poor folks not on the guest list of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, it’s impossible to know what’s happening behind closed doors. The testimony has not been released, even though no classified materials are involved. It’s not even clear why Schiff’s panel, rather than the House Judiciary Committee, is leading the investigation. Like so much about this process, it is unprecedented, with ad hoc rules made up along the way. All we know about the testimony is what trickles out in fragments, leaked by each side to advance its case. This kind of secrecy is shameful in a democracy. So is the refusal to let the accused call his own witnesses or even send his attorney to the proceedings.
Given this “fog of secret impeachment,” it helps to step back and ask what the debate is really about. I see three main questions so far. All are related to President Trump’s phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the delay in providing U.S. aid to Kiev.
(1) Did President Trump demand a quid pro quo? That is, did he require Ukraine to do something specific before the U.S. would release aid money? Or did he simply request it?
(2) Did Ukraine’s leaders believe that aid would be withheld unless they complied with Trump’s dictum? Apparently not, at least until several weeks after the phone call. “How can there be a genuine quid pro quo,” Trump supporters ask, “if the people allegedly being coerced don’t know about it?”
(3) Did the U.S. ask for anything improper? No one doubts that corruption is pervasive in Ukraine, that the U.S. has good reasons to reduce fraud, bribery, and insider deals in its aid recipients, or that the Burisma energy company was considered a “corruption problem” deserving investigation. The question is whether it was proper for Trump and his surrogates to seek a Ukrainian investigation of this alleged corruption or, alternatively, whether it was illicit because it directly involved the Biden family and Trump highlighted their role? Read more