Back in the days of the Russia investigation, I opined that there would be no significant legal action taken against Trump in the absence of clear evidence of a quid pro quo. As it turned out, there wasn’t even enough evidence of collaboration to make out a case for a conspiracy, so the issue of the quid pro quo never came up.
Today, in addition to his argument that he is above the law, Trump is defending himself by maintaining there was no quid pro quo with Ukraine. The evidence, however, includes the following:
- The rough transcript itself strongly suggests Trump was offering a deal;
- What would you expect the co-author of “The Art of the Deal” to propose?
- There is no evidence that Trump had any ongoing interest in Ukrainian corruption outside of issues that affected him personally;
- There was no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of either Biden;
- Why would it have been necessary for Trump to operate a shadow foreign policy outside of the State Department and the NSC if he just wanted to talk about corruption in general?
- Mulvaney’s “defense” just indicates that the deal involved investigating baseless conspiracy theories about 2016 as well as the Bidens.
Michael Cohen made it clear that Trump frequently uses barely veiled threats in the manner of a mob boss. The letter to Erdogan is of the same vein. Why would any reasonable person, under these circumstances, believe there was no quid pro quo?