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Originally Posted by HedonistForever
A point I have been making from day one. It is up to the prosecution to not only lay out their case but prove what they have said was either illegal or rises to the level of impeachment. It is simple enough for the jurors say their case did not and they will be left to explain this decision to their constituents.
"Distort the truth". Now that's rich coming from Adam "distorting the truth is my shtick" Schiff who had to apologize for distorting what Trump said in the phone call.
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The Trump team’s case.
1. “The transcript shows that the president did not condition either security assistance or a meeting on anything. The paused security assistance funds aren’t even mentioned on the call.”
Remember what’s at issue here. Trump, on the July 25 call, asked Zelensky to launch two investigations, one focused on former vice president Joe Biden and unfounded allegations about his actions in Ukraine in 2016, and another centered on a bizarre conspiracy theory in which Ukraine is implicated in 2016 election interference. To compel Ukraine to launch those investigations, the Democrats argue, Trump delayed a White House meeting sought by Zelensky and withheld military and security aid scheduled to be sent to Ukraine.
Purpura’s right that the transcript doesn’t include any conditioning of the requested investigations on a meeting or aid during the call. What he doesn’t mention, though, is evidence sitting just outside that call which makes clear that Trump’s team made that conditionality clear to Zelensky’s team.
Trump spoke with Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland that morning. Sondland then reached out to then-Ukraine special envoy Kurt Volker, asking Volker to call him. Shortly after, Volker sent a text message to Andriy Yermak, a key adviser to Zelensky, with whom he’d earlier had lunch in Kyiv.
“Heard from White House,” Volker wrote. “[A]ssuming President [Zelensky] convinces trump he will investigate / ‘get to the bottom of what happened’ in 2016, we will nail down date for visit to Washington.”
Volker then sent a message to Sondland.
“[H]ad a great lunch with Yermak and then passed your message to him,” Volker wrote. “He will see you tomorrow, think everything in place.”
Sondland testified about that message, which he said, “likely I would have received that from President Trump.”
During the call, Zelensky at one point seems to make explicit reference to the investigate-for-visit mandate mentioned by Volker.
“I also wanted to thank you for your invitation to visit the United States, specifically Washington D.C.,” Zelensky said, according to the rough transcript. “On the other hand, I also wanted (to) ensure you that we will be very serious about the case and will work on the investigation.”
No, Trump didn’t say that Zelensky wasn’t getting a meeting without the investigation.
He didn’t need to. His team had already passed that along.
Viva la Shifty Schiff
