President Donald Trump now admits that he ordered his staff to freeze nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine a few days before a phone call in which he pressured the Eastern European nation’s leader to investigate the family of political rival Joe Biden.
The revelation is critical to national security and U.S. democracy.
Trump reportedly had a summer phone call with Ukrainian President Voldymyr Zelenskiy, in which Trump is said to have pushed for investigations into Biden. In the days before that call, Trump ordered the aid to Ukraine frozen.
Trump is not credible when he denies that any requests for help in procuring damaging information about Biden were tied to the aid freeze.
In 2014, the United States began providing military aid to the government of Ukraine shortly after Russia illegally annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. With Ukraine’s new president facing opposition from separatist rebels, the aid was viewed as a demonstration of U.S. determination to push back against Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Trump’s call to the foreign leader, and his subsequent comments about the conversation, raise questions about whether the president improperly used his office to pressure another country as a way of helping his own re-election prospects.
“These allegations are stunning, both in the national security threat they pose and the potential corruption they represent,” wrote seven freshmen in Congress, who include a former Navy pilot, soldiers, officers and intelligence analysts.
“We do not arrive at this conclusion lightly,” the lawmakers wrote in a Washington Post op-ed. The lawmakers include Reps. Gil Cisneros of California, Jason Crow of Colorado, Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, Elaine Luria of Virginia, Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Abigail Spanberger of Virginia.
“These new allegations are a threat to all we have sworn to protect. We must preserve the checks and balances envisioned by the Founders and restore the trust of the American people in our government. And that is what we intend to do.”
Trump denied telling the Ukraine president that his country would only get U.S. aid if it investigated Biden’s son. “I didn’t do it,” he said. But the latest revelations make the president’s denial hard to believe. He did not have to issue a direct threat. By withholding aid he was sending a clear message.
The new allegations come as more Democrats move toward impeachment proceedings.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday launched a formal impeachment inquiry on Trump because of reports that Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate Biden and his son.
Pelosi had been understandably reluctant to pursue impeachment proceedings, believing that the Republican-controlled Senate would oppose it. Pelosi had previously resisted calls for impeachment and insisted that Congress must not start formal proceedings unless the American public demands it.
It’s time that Americans tell Congress that the president’s repeated lawlessness can no longer be tolerated.
Trump has gotten away with wrongdoing including being implicated in several instances of obstruction of justice involving the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and impeding an investigation into foreign interference in a U.S. election. More than 700 former federal prosecutors (nearly half of whom joined the Department of Justice under a Republican president), issued a statement saying that Trump would have been indicted for obstruction of justice if he were an ordinary citizen, based on the contents of the Mueller report. Trump has also gone around Congress to fund border wall construction with money already appropriated for other purposes.
The new allegations that he demanded that a foreign leader investigate the family of his political rival show that the president clearly believes he can act with impunity and that no one will stop him.
So far he has been right.
It’s time for citizens to speak out and lawmakers to act.
It’s time to stop Trump from mocking our democracy.
(Reprinted from the Philadelphia Tribune)
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