This we all know for certain:
A president of the United States ought to by no means strong-arm a overseas authorities into digging up grime on a political opponent.
That’s placing uncooked self-interest above what’s greatest for the nation. That’s an impeachable offense.
Yet we’ve got each cause to imagine President Donald Trump has performed simply that.
In the approaching days, Trump’s defenders, of their determined denial, will try to spin this in any other case. Don’t be taken in.
There is way we’ve got but to study a grievance filed in August by an nameless whistleblower. But the gist of the allegation, submitted to the intelligence group’s inspector common, seems to go like this:
The Trump administration, together with the president himself, put the squeeze on the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, to analyze the enterprise dealings of a son of former Vice President Joe Biden, who’s a Democratic candidate for president. If Ukraine didn’t go after the Bidens, Zelensky had ever cause to worry, the White House would block $250 million in navy help that Congress had already accepted.
And, in truth, the White House did slow-walk the navy help package deal for weeks, releasing the funds solely on Sept. 12 — the day after a House committee requested for details about the whistleblower grievance.
The president’s protection, put forth on Friday, is that this: It “doesn’t matter” what he stated to anyone in Ukraine and, gee, “someone ought to look into Joe Biden.”
To which all American patriots ought to reply: Yes, Mr. President, it does matter. You took an oath to do what’s greatest on your nation, not on your reelection.
If there may be reliable grime to be discovered on the Bidens, Mr. President, go for it, even when the present accusations involving Hunter Biden’s work for a Ukrainian gasoline firm look like one other case of Fox News hocus pocus.
But American overseas coverage can by no means be an arm of a president’s reelection marketing campaign.
Three House committees now are demanding to see the main points of the whistleblower’s grievance, which they contend is their proper below the regulation. The White House is obstructing this effort, claiming that the president’s communications, which apparently lie on the coronary heart of the whistle-blower’s grievance, are topic to government privilege.
We don’t know who’s proper on the regulation on this one, although we’d wish to see the discharge of the whistleblower’s full grievance.
We simply know {that a} miserably unethical presidency grows worse by the day.
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