The Zelensky-Trump phone call was released by the White House and is here.
In his riveting testimony last February before the House Committee on Oversight, Cohen explained how Trump pulls people in and gets them to lie and cheat for him. Cohen quotations from here.
Trump doesn’t order anyone to lie or commit crimes. He’s more subtle.
Cohen offers this example: During the 2016 campaign, while Cohen was negotiating with Russian officials to build Trump Tower Moscow, Trump often asked how the negotiations were going.
Other times Trump would look Cohen in the eye and say that he had “no business in Russia.”
Trump’s would then go out and tell the American people the same lie.
“In his way,” Cohen explained, “he was telling me to lie.” Cohen understood that, “no business in Russia,” was the lie he was supposed to tell.
Andrew McCabe tells a similar story.
After Trump fired Comey, Trump summoned McCabe to a meeting.
Trump offered a “gleeful” description of what happened with the firing of Comey.
None of it was true. McCabe understood that he was supposed to “adopt” the lie Trump was telling him.
Trump never leveled a threat. Later, when McCabe refused to repeat the lie, Trump attacked him with stunning venom and vengeance.
If Trump made no outward threat, why did Cohen do Trump’s bidding? Was he scared?
Nope.
Cohen explained that, “Being around Mr. Trump was intoxicating. When you were in his presence, you felt like you were involved in something greater than yourself — that you were somehow changing the world,” Cohen explained.
Trump pulls people in.
He dangles wealth and power.
These tactics have a special appeal to the GOP.
The modern Republican Party—in a backlash against the New Deal, women’s rights and Civil Rights movements—morphed into a reactionary, authoritarian party that wants to win at any cost. See this post, and this post.
The tactics described by Michael Cohen were on full display in Trump’s phone call with Ukranian President Zelensky.
After Zelensky said he wanted to buy javelins from the U.S., Trump said, “I would like you to do us a favor, though because our country has been through a whole lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.”
He went on to say, “I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it.”
Trump next talked about how the Ukrainian prosecutor was “very good and he was shut down and that’s really unfair.”
Trump then told a lie: “There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, and that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that, so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great.”
Next Trump told an even more blatant lie. He said, “Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it . . it sounds horrible to me.”
After some back and forth, Trump said “I will tell Rudy [Giuliani] and Attorney General Barr to call. Thank you.”
Okay, so, what the heck happened in that phone call?
For this analysis, let’s limit ourselves to this particular document, released by the White House. (If it was edited to leave out even more incriminating evidence, that doesn’t change this analysis.)
For this analysis, we’ll ignore the circumstances of the call, and the withholding of aid to Ukraine.
We’ll look at the call by itself.
Trump wanted the Ukrainian government to investigate Joe Biden. He also wanted them to reach a certain conclusion.
There was also no bribery because there was no quid pro quo, or explicit exchange of value as defined by federal bribery law. (In a nutshell, the Supreme Court, in XX made proving bribery particularly difficult. If, for example, you give money to a politician and ask for a favor, this isn’t bribery. Otherwise, almost anyone donating money is guilty of bribery.)
In fact, if we limit ourselves to the text of the phone call, there was no crime.
For something to be a crime, it must violate a particular criminal statute.
It isn’t against the law to ask a foreign leader to investigate someone or to misstate facts.
Trump wanted Zelensky to order an investigation of Biden, Trump’s political opponent. Obviously, this would help Trump get elected in 2020.
In turn, Trump would help Zelensky. Trump said, “Your economy is going to get better and better I predict.”
Anyone who read The Godfather knows that this is how it’s done.
There are no direct threats. The Godfather makes people want to serve him.
The Godfather is careful.
He makes sure nobody can pin an actual crime on him.
What, exactly, was Trump doing?
He wasn’t merely asking a foreign government to manufacture evidence against his political opponent.
He was weaponizing the U.S. A.G. and the U.S. Justice Department to carry this out.
You see, when Trump goes to work each day in the Oval Office, he isn’t thinking about how to better the lives of the American people. He is spinning mafia-like webs to secure his own power.
Watch closely to see which members of the GOP are okay with that.
When the White House distributed “Talking points,” it made clear their spokepeople are supposed to say “No Quid Pro Quo.”
Why?
Because the “No Collusion” thing worked so well.
Predictably, people are out there discussing whether there was quid pro quo.
Some people are screaming “Yes, Quid Pro Quo!”
Trump wants people to think that to be impeachable, an act has to be a crime.
Trump kept saying “no collusion” because he knew that when his behavior was examined, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to meet each element of criminal conspiracy. When the prosecutors were unable to charge him with a crime, he could declare himself completely exonerated–even though he engaged in egregious behavior during the election.
Again, Trump wants the argument to be over whether he committed the crime of bribery.
To be impeachable, an offense does not have to be a crime.
Not everything dangerous or immoral is a crime. Behavior is a crime only if it violates a particular criminal statute.
Some things are not crimes but if the president does it, it’s dangerous.
To take a completely random example, it’s not a crime to be propped up by foreign money. If Joe Average lives entirely on money from, say, Putin, the nation isn’t in danger. But if the US President is secretly propped up by Russian money, the safety and security of the US is compromised.
Limiting impeachable offenses to behavior that can be proven in court to meet all the elements of a specific crime is to allow the U.S. President to get away with all kinds of bad behavior that endanger the nation.
Moreover, as Perdonome points out, much foreign relation involves quid pro quo–exchange of value. The difference is that the U.S. president should not be exchanging foreign policy for personal favors that benefit him personally.
If (as is likely) prosecutors wouldn’t be able to prove each element of bribery beyond a reasonable doubt, he’ll declare himself exonerated.
Let’s learn from our “NO COLLUSION” mistakes
Don’t walk into the “NO QUID PRO QUO” trap.