‘The only “evidence” so far of an actual linkage is in chatter among US diplomats, speculating about second- and third-hand gossip. It’s impossible to see how that justifies impeachment.’
Here’s a witness Schiff doesn’t dare call in impeachment hearings
Editorial Board, NYPost.com
Ukraine Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko
So, Adam Schiff, when can we expect this man to take the stand?
Badly undermining Democrats’ impeachment narrative, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko told the press in Kiev on Thursday, “I have never seen a direct relationship between investigations and security assistance.”
That is, between the investigations President Trump wanted into 1) Ukrainian interference in the 2016 campaign and 2) Joe and Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian firm Burisma, on the one hand, and US aid that Trump put on hold this summer, on the other.
He specified that he didn’t hear that message from Trump’s top envoy, Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland, who “did not tell us, and did not tell me exactly, about the relation between the assistance and the investigations.”
In summary: “Yes, investigations were mentioned, you know, in a presidential conversation. But there was no clear connection between these events.”
SEE ALSO
Sondland made no link between US aid, Biden probe: Ukrainian minister
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has also made it plain he never felt undue pressure to investigate the Bidens. And he never did, yet the aid went through anyway.
You start to see why Democrats have dropped their talk of a “quid pro quo” at the heart of the impeachment case. It’s increasingly plain that Trump never linked the investigations to the aid, let alone tried to blackmail Ukraine into faking a case against the Bidens, as Dems insinuate.
Yes, Trump and his intermediaries raised the investigations issue. But Trump had already given Ukraine the military aid that his predecessor wouldn’t. He put a hold on one major tranche of aid this summer — but Zelensky didn’t know about the hold at the time of the phone call where Trump was supposedly trying to blackmail him.
The only “evidence” so far of an actual linkage is in chatter among US diplomats, speculating about second- and third-hand gossip. It’s impossible to see how that justifies impeachment.
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