The damning new evidence about the Zelensky phone call (premeditated, planned and timed)

[Roland99]

New documents show that plans to freeze aid to Ukraine were put in place the day before the President made his demand for political help to Ukraine's president. More proof that this was a thought out scheme executed over time. It keeps getting worse.


The damning new evidence about the Zelensky phone call
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/01/22/opinions/impeachment-evidence-planned-effort-withhold-aid-milgram/index.html

While it has been previously shown that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) sent an email to the Department of Defense instructing them to withhold military aid to Ukraine roughly 90 minutes after the President's July 25 call, the new documents provide the first concrete evidence that the White House was preparing to withhold aid to Ukraine prior to the call. They also provide a road map of efforts led by Michael Duffey, the associate director of OMB, to coordinate the halting of the aid with the White House Counsel's office and the Department of Defense.

This revelation follows just days after the non-partisan General Accounting Office declared that the withholding of Ukrainian military aid by the White House was unlawful.

Tuesday night's evidence comes from almost 200 pages of heavily redacted documents turned over by the Office of Management and Budget pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request by a watchdog group, American Oversight.

...

They are something far more important as they show that the President's effort to bully Zelensky to "do us a favor" was premeditated, planned and timed to give the President a hammer to compel a foreign leader to do Trump's personal bidding for his personal gain. (Trump vehemently denies that this was his intent.)

[Lonestarblue]

1. Trump could confess that he committed bribery and Republicans would still do nothing.

Republican excuses: Well, yes, it’s bribery, but even though the Constitution mentions bribery as an impeachable offense, it’s only possible that you could impeach a president for bribery if you really wanted to. But the Constitution doesn’t specifically say you HAVE to impeach the president for bribery, so we’re not going to impeach him.

[llmart]

2. +1

Let's face it. Nothing that he did/does is ever going to make the Senate vote to remove him. He was absolutely correct that he could shoot someone on 5th avenue and get away with it. He's always known the fix was in.

[jmg257]

3. Ugh - I hate when they talk about all "this new evidence" without showing it!!!

Or linking to it!!

On edit: https://www.americanoversight.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/AO_OMB_Records_21Jan2020.pdf

[crickets]

4. Agreed and thanks for the link. nt

[DeminPennswoods]

5. Crow actually held some of the redacted pages up

during his turn presenting evidence last night.

[jmg257]

6. Thanks! I edited above with a link...lots of back and forth emails with subject Ukraine.

Everything else is blacked out.

https://www.americanoversight.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/AO_OMB_Records_21Jan2020.pdf

[Roland99]

7. Thanks!

[howard Bitterman]

8. The Zelensky Phone Call

The material below is taken from my Amazon Kindle book, Six Essays on the Impeachment of Donald J Trump (15 pages)

Article I of the House impeachment correctly mentions, as was brought out by witness testimony, that President Trump’s aim was to secure announcements of investigations rather than the investigation themselves. U.S. Attorney John Durham is pursuing a criminal investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation. Notably, he has not announced the targets of his investigation because Justice Department policy is to not reveal the names of targets of an investigation unless and until an indictment is secured (doing so and allegedly lying about it was the origin of Andrew McCabe’s troubles). Ukraine apparently has no such restrictions so that securing a Ukrainian announcement was essentially an end run around Justice Department policy.

In the transcript of the July 25th call between President Trump and President Zelensky, Zelensky purportedly said in response to President’s Trump denigration of Ambassador Yovanovitch, “ It was great that you were the first one who told me she was a bad ambassador because I agree with you 100%. Her attitude towards me was far from the best as she admired the previous President and she was on his side. She would not accept me as a new President well enough.”

Numerous officials have testified that Marie Yovanovitch is an experienced and exemplary diplomat and that therefore the above must be false. No American diplomat would refuse to accept a leader selected in a legitimate election.

In a prior article, Donald Trump Altered the Zelenskiy Transcript (second edition), I argued that President Trump directed a transcript that did not accurately reflect the conversation. This was written prior to Lt Colonel Alexander Vindman’s (who speaks Ukranian and English) testimony. Vindman’s testimony does not confirm my suspicions concerning the transcript. Of course Vindman was testifying under subpoena and might have confined his testimony to what he was asked. In any case we are left with the following:

Zelensky’s remarks regarding Yovanovitch were false.

Then either Zelensky never actually said them (altered transcript)

or

Zelensky was so anxious to kiss Donald Trump’s ass and secure the military aid and White House visit that he deliberately and maliciously made false statements concerning Ambassador Yovanovitch.

or


Portions of Zelensky’s conversation were read from a script provided in advance by the Trump administration.

I do not believe there are any other possible explanations and they all support an abuse of power charge or an obstruction charge.