Rudy Giuliani just blew up Trump's "no quid pro quo" talking point

"On Thursday, Giuliani — apparently posting from somewhere in Kiev, where he’s currently traveling as part of his ongoing international effort to dig up dirt on the Bidens — posted tweets explicitly acknowledging a link between ongoing US assistance to Ukraine and investigations into the Biden family.

“The conversation about corruption in Ukraine was based on compelling evidence of criminal conduct by then VP Biden, in 2016, that has not been resolved and until it is will be a major obstacle ... to the US assisting Ukraine with its anti-corruption reforms,” Giuliani claimed, despite the fact that no such evidence has emerged.




In short, Giuliani tweeted the quid pro quo.


Trump and his Republican supporters in Congress have sought to portray the efforts of the president and Giuliani to cajole the Ukrainian government into announcing investigations into the Bidens as being rooted in the president’s good-faith concerns about “corruption,” rather than his own political self-interests.

But Giuliani’s tweet reveals the hollowness of that talking point. “Corruption” is just a stand-in word for “Biden.” He doesn’t even try to hide it.

Even though Giuliani’s tweet gives up the game, White House spokesperson Hogan Gidley appeared on Fox News on Friday, still claiming that Trump “didn’t press [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky on anything other than getting to the bottom of corruption in his country. We know that.”


But if Giuliani’s tweet isn’t enough to convince you otherwise, consider that the word “corruption” doesn’t appear even once in the summaries of the Trump-Zelensky calls released by the White House.


https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2019/12/6/20998714/rudy-giuliani-quid-pro-quo-tweets-ukraine-biden