The Atlantic : The Scandal Has Spiraled Out of Trump's Control

When the week began, the president faced questions about Ukraine. Now the inquiry has gone global.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/global-scandal/599434/

As last week came to a close, Donald Trump was confronting the most serious crisis of his presidency, as Democrats moved forward with impeachment hearings in a serious scandal over his pressuring Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 election. Seven days later, the scandal is even more serious, but it has metastasized. This is no longer a controversy about a whistle-blower complaint, an American ally in eastern Europe, and the president. It is now an all-encompassing scandal, involving many of the top officials in the Trump administration pressuring countries around the world, from Australia to Ukraine and China to Great Britain.

What has changed is not the facts, but what the public knows. It’s clear now that the president, his vice president, and several of his top, Senate-confirmed aides—as well as his personal lawyer cum private foreign minister, Rudy Giuliani— have spent significant time over the past year trying to pressure foreign governments into producing stories that can aid in Trump’s reelection. Ukraine remains ground zero for the story, if only because there’s so much more information about Trump’s efforts there than anywhere else. The public has already had a chance to read the partial transcript of a call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump pressures his counterpart to investigate the Bidens and also a conspiracy theory about the 2016 election, as well as the whistle-blower complaint. Beyond that, Giuliani conducted many of the early stages of the operation in the open, talking about them to reporters.

Thursday brought new bombshells in the Ukraine case, as Trump’s former envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker, who was forced to resign last week, gave a deposition to House investigators. Republicans who were present insisted that Volker had not said there was a quid pro quo for dirt on Biden, but you don’t have to take their word for it, because the Democratic chairs of three committees released text messages that Volker turned over. The messages make clear that both American and Ukrainian officials understood that there was a quid pro quo: If Zelensky wanted to get a White House visit and military aid, he had to manufacture an investigation into the Bidens. In one message, Volker wrote that “assuming President Z convinces Trump he will investigate/‘get to the bottom of what happened’ in 2016, we will nail down date for visit to Washington.” Trump’s ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland wrote, “i think potus really wants the deliverable.”

In another exchange, Bill Taylor—a career Foreign Service officer and the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine after the ambassador was fired, reportedly at Giuliani’s behest—wrote, “Are we now saying that security assistance and WH meeting are conditioned on investigations?” Sondland, evidently worried about creating a paper trail, instructed Taylor to call him. A few days later, Taylor said, “I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.” After taking five hours to reply, Sondland again tried to clean up matters and prevent any written record. “Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump’s intentions. The President has been crystal clear no quid pro quo’s of any kind,” he wrote, adding, “I suggest we stop the back and forth by text.” Sondland also recommended that Taylor contact the secretary of state if he had other questions, making Mike Pompeo’s involvement in the scheme clear.

But the stain of scandal is spreading, as a steady drip of evidence shows that Trump has sought to gather dirt on Biden from friends and adversaries alike, across the globe.................

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