The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Opinion The smoking gun has already been revealed

Opinions columnist, 2007-2022
October 21, 2019 at 5:00 p.m. EDT
President Trump at the White House on Friday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

The impeachment of President Trump has reached an early point of absurdity.

Just about everyone in Washington believes that a quid pro quo — in which Trump used American clout to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into an investigation of Joe and Hunter Biden — would be impeachable (or at least, as Sen. Lindsey O. Graham of South Carolina recently put it, “very disturbing”). And just about everyone in Washington believes that Trump used American clout to pressure Zelensky into an investigation of Joe and Hunter Biden. Which Republicans such as Graham deny was a quid pro quo.

It is a nakedly deceitful position.

No one disputes that Trump froze hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine shortly before his call to Zelensky. No one can dispute that this created massive leverage with a beleaguered client country. No one disputes that Trump reminded Zelensky of U.S. largesse three times in the released rough transcript of the call. No one disputes that Zelensky assured Trump of Ukrainian reciprocity. No one denies that Trump found this insufficient and asked for further favors: the investigation of a political opponent and his son, as well as of a crackpot theory that Ukraine was behind the hacking of Democratic National Committee emails. No one can dispute that the fulfillment of those favors would have been regarded as politically advantageous by the president.

Here are key moments from acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney's remarks to reporters about Ukraine on Oct. 17. (Video: Zach Purser Brown/The Washington Post)

At least this far, the facts are generally conceded. But a few questions remain.

First, was this a corrupt quid pro quo? This seems to be what Mick Mulvaney denied in his news conference last week. He claimed that it is the ordinary course of diplomacy for a president to use aid as leverage. “We do that all the time with foreign policy,” he said. “We were holding up money at the same time for, what was it, the Northern Triangle countries . . . so that they would change their policies on immigration.” In the Ukrainian situation, Mulvaney argued, the president was (among other things) pressuring Zelensky to fight corruption.

It is an argument Trump has tweeted as well: “As President of the United States, I have an absolute right, perhaps even a duty, to investigate, or have investigated, CORRUPTION, and that would include asking, or suggesting, other Countries to help us out!”

Fear-driven Republicans have been enablers of President Trump with their silence, argues Post columnist George F. Will. (Video: The Washington Post)

But this, of course, is not an “absolute” right. The president should not target investigations for selfish or corrupt purposes. For example, it is perfectly legitimate for the IRS to broadly enforce tax laws; it is an abuse of power for a president to order the IRS to investigate a list of his political enemies. In the case of Ukraine, the president was not urging a fight against corruption for the benefit of the Ukrainian people. He was asking for the investigation of two people for his own benefit. Trump has managed, with typical ethical creativity, to use the fight against corruption as cover for his own corruption.

A second question: Was Trump involved in a provable quid pro quo? It is the emerging Republican contention that the legal demonstration of a quid pro quo should require an explicit blackmail threat from the president. The goal is to set a standard so high that it is practically unreachable — like demanding that the judge personally witness a murder before a conviction can occur. Some Republicans are essentially contending that a real quid pro quo requires chanting the Latin words during the deed. They might eventually insist on a signed document stamped with the words quid pro quo by the White House counsel’s office.

Whatever strategy Republicans adopt, the smoking gun has already been revealed. It is the rough transcript of the Ukraine conversation that the White House initially parked in a classified computer system but released after the call was exposed by a whistleblower. A common-sense reading of that text reveals a president of the United States involved in a politically motivated shakedown of a foreign leader.

This is a quid pro quo. It is a corrupt quid pro quo. It is a proven quid pro quo. In the end, there is only one question: Does it rise to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors”?

Here is where well-intentioned Republican legislators will struggle. They know that foreign powers such as Russia have influenced U.S. elections by subterfuge. They will determine whether an American president can encourage foreign influence on U.S. elections without consequence.

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Read more:

James Downie: Mick Mulvaney tries to clean up his mess, and fails

Max Boot: Sorry, Mick Mulvaney. I can’t ‘get over it.’

Dana Milbank: Welcome to the quid pro show

The Post’s View: Mick Mulvaney’s comments on Trump and Ukraine couldn’t have been clearer