Trump Extorted Ukraine in 2017 and 2018 Before Getting Caught This Year

Trump Extorted Ukraine in 2017 and 2018 Before Getting Caught This Year

By Jonathan Chait, the Intelligencer, NY Magazine

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/_pages/ck3qf0y5d004fauyej3sv763m.html?fbclid=IwAR3_EQcsY4WONkmrutM9orkAE0sL0P7irdaXrRyxwQ4WARORJLdPqiPSFxA

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Begin with Trump’s notion that Ukraine, not Russia, hacked Democratic emails. This is the idea he raises in his call with Zelensky, asking his befuddled Ukrainian counterpart to locate a server that, according to this bizarre conspiracy theory, was handed by Democrats over to Ukrainians and that would prove Russia had been framed. American intelligence officials have described the theory as a Russian-backed disinformation campaign.

Where did Trump get this idea from? He seems to have first heard it in the summer of 2016, from Paul Manafort, his campaign manager. Manafort’s deputy, Rick Gates, told Robert Mueller that Manafort had been spouting the theory that Ukrainians framed Russia since the summer of 2016, and that the theory seemed to come from Manafort’s partner, Konstantin Kilimnik, who American officials believed was a Russian intelligence operative.

By April 2017, Trump was repeating this theory in public, falsely telling an Associated Press reporter that a “Ukrainian-based” company had taken the Democratic server with the stolen emails. A few months after that, Rudy Giuliani began meeting with Ukrainian officials. Giuliani recently explained that he pursued the theory that Ukraine, not Russia, had hacked Democratic emails because it would exonerate Trump. Obviously, Trump could not have colluded with Russia to exploit stolen emails if Russia hadn’t stolen the emails in the first place. “I knew they were hot and heavy on this Russian collusion thing, even though I knew 100 percent that it was false,” he told Glenn Beck. “I said to myself, ‘Hallelujah.’ I’ve got what a defense lawyer always wants: I can go prove someone else committed this crime.”

Giuliani undertook what appear to be two previous episodes of trading diplomatic favors to Ukrainians in return for steps to protect Trump from the Mueller investigation. The first apparent trade involved a meeting between Trump and Ukraine’s then-president Petro Poroshenko in return for a Ukrainian investigation that would exonerate Manafort, then a prime target of Mueller’s.

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