WaPo Greg Sargent: Here's a timeline of Trump's latest scandal. It's damning.

[Dennis Donovan]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/24/heres-timeline-trumps-latest-scandal-its-damning/?__twitter_impression=true

By Greg Sargent Opinion writer
September 24, 2019 at 10:23 a.m. EDT

<snip>

The Post reports that around July 18, Trump ordered White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to freeze $400 million in military aid to Ukraine. A week later, Trump had his call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, pressuring him to investigate corruption in a manner that Trump hoped would damage Joe Biden.

Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani have mounted a sustained public campaign for Ukraine to investigate a convoluted story in which Biden, as vice president, supposedly pressed for the ouster of a Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating a company on whose board Biden’s son sat. But the story is nonsense in every which way.

<snip>

July 18th or thereabouts: Trump orders Mulvaney to freeze the aid to Ukraine. Trump’s decision is communicated to officials at the State and Defense departments. Importantly, as The Post reports, officials are instructed to tell lawmakers that the delay stemmed from some kind of “interagency process,” but not to share any more details.

July 24: The special counsel testifies to Congress, and Trump hails the proceedings as a “very good day.” While the special counsel detailed extraordinary corruption and wrongdoing, Trump plainly takes from it that he can conduct himself with total impunity.

July 25: Trump holds a call with Zelensky. Trump himself will later admit he brought up Biden and “corruption” in Ukraine. It is also subsequently reported that Trump directly urged Zelensky to discuss this with Giuliani.


Late July: A few days after that call, Giuliani meets with an aide to Zelensky, and demands an investigation into Biden. Giuliani later admits he would not be doing this without discussing it with Trump.

Aug. 12: The inspector general of the intelligence community receives a complaint from a whistleblower.

Aug. 26: The inspector general forwards the whistleblower complaint to the DNI, saying he deemed it of “urgent concern” and “credible.”

Aug. 30: CNN reports that Trump is seriously looking at blocking the aid entirely, and that the Pentagon privately advised for the aid to be released.

Early Sept.: Senator Chris Murphy (D-Ct.) speaks to Zelensky. Murphy has since characterized their conversation by saying that Zelensky “directly” expressed concerns that the cutoff of aid was a “consequence” of failing to probe Biden.

</snip>

[dalton99a]

1. Kick

So here’s what we know: As the timeline shows, Trump was thinking hard about Biden and Ukraine well in advance of ordering the aid frozen. At the same time, many officials in Trump’s own administration were deliberately kept in the dark about Trump’s rationale for freezing the aid.

Does that prove a connection? No, and we still don’t know whether Trump explicitly threatened to withhold the aid while making his demand of Zelensky, but this sequence makes a connection seem very plausible.

Regardless, the timeline shows that this constitutes extraordinarily serious misconduct even if Trump didn’t offer any explicit quid pro quo. Ukraine badly wanted the aid, and Zelensky told Sen. Murphy that Trump made him feel like there was a connection.

Both Trump and Giuliani have openly flaunted their own efforts to get Ukraine to dig dirt on Biden. Trump did this literally the day after the special counsel’s testimony persuaded him he can operate with impunity.

Trump’s top officials then corruptly concealed the “urgent” and “credible” whistleblower complaint from Congress -- and we then only learned that Trump’s pressure on Zelensky appeared to be at the center of that complaint through dogged reporting.

No matter how you cut this, Trump used the power of the presidency to try to leverage a foreign power into interfering in the election on his behalf. And his top officials appear to be breaking the law to prevent Congress from getting to the bottom of it.

[Dennis Donovan]

3. Thanks!

I should've excerpted that instead of the actual timeline.

[dalton99a]

5. YW. The timeline is quite important also

[qazplm135]

2. were there any head to head polling stories about Biden and Trump

around July 18th?

Something precipitated the freezing at that time vice some other time.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

6. not sure

but the H2H polling between Trump has generally been pretty bad for Trump ever since Biden officially announced (and I think even before then, but once Biden announced, I'm sure that Trump's anxiety about Biden went through the roof). Trump clearly fears Biden as a candidate, hence this extraordinary effort to get Ukraine to probe him.

[spanone]

4. K&R...

Early Sept.: Senator Chris Murphy (D-Ct.) speaks to Zelensky. Murphy has since characterized their conversation by saying that Zelensky “directly” expressed concerns that the cutoff of aid was a “consequence” of failing to probe Biden.

[Fiendish Thingy]

7. No amount of obstruction can erase this evidence already on record- no more "if true" qualifiers

From nervous politicians- it IS true, and admitted by Trump, Giuliani, and Zelensky. Murphy can be called to testify to Zelensky's statement, and videos of Trump and Rudy confessing can be entered into the record for impeachment.