In April 2014, then-President Barack Obama signed a law authorizing the provision of loan guarantees to Ukraine.
That same month, then-Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Ukraine and made the following announcements: the Obama administration intends to guarantee Ukraine $1 billion in loans, and the United States intends to support Ukraine develop its energy industry.
“Just last week, the United States government signed a bill proposed by our administration to guarantee a $1 billion loan with Ukraine,” Biden said in Kyiv.
“With the right investments and the right choices,” Biden said, “Ukraine can reduce its energy dependence and increase its energy security. We will stand with you to help you achieve that goal in every way possible.”
In April 2014, Ukrainian energy company Burisma hired the Vice President’s son, Hunter Biden, to its board.
In December 2015, as Biden was urging Ukraine to rid itself of corruption, The New York Times published an editorial titled “Joe Biden Lectures Ukraine” – which criticized Biden’s son’s work for Burisma.
Biden just gave a speech to the Ukrainian parliament.
“Mr Biden’s passionate speeches about the need to end the pervasive corruption in Ukraine and the power of its oligarchs have been met with stony silence,” The Times reports.
“Unfortunately,” The Times wrote, “the credibility of Mr. Biden’s message may be undermined by his son’s links to the Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings, which is owned by a former government official suspected of corruption.”
“A spokesman for his son, Hunter Biden, says he joined Burisma’s board to strengthen its corporate governance,” he told The Times. “That may be true. But Burisma’s owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, is under investigation in the U.K. and Ukraine. Hunter Biden should have been clear that any links with the Ukrainian oligarch would harm his father’s efforts to help Ukraine. This is not a board he should be on.”
But he sat down.
The issue now is not whether the vice president’s son should take a job at a Ukrainian energy company at the same time that the vice president is promoting American aid to Ukraine and urging the country to develop its energy industry.
The question is whether President Donald Trump should be impeached for allegedly delaying U.S. military aid to Ukraine in order to pressure Ukraine to publicly announce its intention to investigate Biden.
Even if you accept the unprecedented assumption made by House Democratic leaders that Trump’s alleged actions toward Ukraine constitute an impeachable offense — even though they are not a crime — House Democrats have not come close to proving that those actions occurred as alleged.
And they don’t try to prove it.
Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, was the main impeachment witness in the House Intelligence Committee hearings. One exchange with Republican Representative Michael Turner of Ohio destroyed any usefulness of his testimony to impeachment advocates.
“Nobody on the planet has told you that President Trump is tying aid to investigations. Yes or no?” Turner asked.
“Yes,” Sondland said.
“So you really don’t have any testimony that connects President Trump to a plan to withhold aid to Ukraine in exchange for these investigations?” Turner asked.
“Beyond my own assumptions,” Sondland said.
“Which means nothing,” Turner said.
Exactly.
If House Democrats wanted first-hand testimony about what Trump tried to do with Ukraine, they would seek testimony from acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, former national security adviser John Bolton and Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
But it is not so.
George Washington University Law School Professor Jonathan Turley made a powerful case against impeachment to the House Judiciary Committee last week.
He doesn’t support Trump, but he thinks the House of Representatives is doing the wrong thing.
“First, this is a case in which there is no clear finding of criminal conduct. If the House had proceeded without further evidence, it would have been the first such case in history,” he said in written testimony.
“As I have emphasized, it is possible to establish an impeachment case based on a noncriminal allegation of abuse of power,” Turley testified. “The problem is that this is an exceptionally narrow impeachment based on the thinnest possible evidence.”
“In this case, the record is seemingly inadequate,” Turley said. “The problem is not simply that the record does not contain direct evidence that the president made a quid pro quo statement, as Chairman Schiff has suggested. The problem is that the House did not bother to call key witnesses who would have direct knowledge of that. That in itself sets a dangerous precedent.”
The House, Turley said, “is operating on a speculative basis, assuming what the evidence would have shown had there been time or the desire to establish it. The military aid was released after a delay that witnesses described as ‘unusual’ for this or previous administrations.”
“The House testimony is full of references to witnesses like John Bolton, Rudy Giuliani and Mick Mulvaney who clearly have significant information,” Turley said. “To impeach a president on that record would be to expose any future president to the same kind of half-baked impeachment.”
It will not be history that will impeach Trump, but those who will impeach him.
Terence P. Jeffrey is the editor-in-chief of CNSnews.com.
