According to a formal whistleblower complaint, President Donald Trump withheld Congressionally‐appropriated aid from Ukraine in an attempt to pressure Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate Trump’s 2020 political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden. In addition to seeking dirt on Biden, Trump also asked Zelensky to help locate the computer server allegedly used by the Democratic National Committee that was hacked by Russia, suggesting that Trump is intent on relitigating the Mueller investigation into the 2016 campaign.
Although Trump has tried to pass off this episode as entirely above board, he did all this largely outside official channels. Rather than going through the normal interagency process to carry out official policy, Trump tasked his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and several other loyalists to do his dirty work “off the books.” The White House also engaged in an attempted cover up of this chicanery, according to the complaint.
The controversy brings to mind a famous New York Times op‐ed published a year ago. In it, an unnamed senior administration official, claiming to be a part of an internal resistance against the president, identified Trump’s “amorality” as “the root of the problem.” “Anyone who works with him,” the official explained, “knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.”
We agree. It is clear from the whistleblower complaint, the rough transcript of the Zelensky call, and Trump’s own public confessions that the president put his personal political interests above the national interest. While the revelations are shocking, they should not be surprising.
Read more at https://www.cato.org/blog/what-ukraine-tells-us-about-trump
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