Donald and Rudy's Excellent Ukrainian Adventure

Click here for an article by Paul Waldman at The Plum Line, a WaPo blog, entitled "Trump is already colluding with a foreign government to get reelected."

It begins:

There are some news stories so jaw-dropping that you have to read them two or three times to make sure you’re not hallucinating. So it is with a story in the New York Times in which Rudolph W. Giuliani announces to the world that he is going to Ukraine to pressure that country’s government to use its official resources to assist in President Trump’s reelection effort — by mounting an investigation he hopes will produce dirt on Joe Biden.

Yes, Trump is trying to collude with a foreign government in an attempt to aid his campaign by creating negative stories about a potential opponent. Again.

“Oh come on,” you’re saying. “You’ve got to be exaggerating.” I’m not. The Trump team is apparently streamlining its previous pattern, which was to try to secretly work with a foreign government on its campaign, angrily deny it when it’s revealed and then, when caught by incontrovertible evidence, insist that there was never anything wrong with doing it in the first place.

They’re now skipping over the secrecy and denial parts, and just doing it openly.

Rudy's foray into the Ukraine has two objectives: to downplay the depredations of Paul Manafort, Trump's jailbird former campaign manager; and to attempt to smear Joe Biden because of his son's seat as a board member on a possibly shady Ukrainian energy company, Burisma Holdings.

Here's Guiliani's slant on it:

“We’re not meddling in an election, we’re meddling in an investigation, which we have a right to do,” Mr. Giuliani said in an interview on Thursday when asked about the parallel to the special counsel’s inquiry.

“There’s nothing illegal about it,” he said. “Somebody could say it’s improper. And this isn’t foreign policy — I’m asking them to do an investigation that they’re doing already and that other people are telling them to stop. And I’m going to give them reasons why they shouldn’t stop it because that information will be very, very helpful to my client, and may turn out to be helpful to my government.”

Waldman says:

So to be clear: The president of the United States is, through his lawyer, pressuring a foreign government to mount an investigation in order to tarnish his potential general-election opponent.

The article concludes:

This is like a crew of bank robbers stopping on their way into the bank to hold a news conference to announce that they’re going to hold the customers at gunpoint, tie up the tellers, blow the door to the safe, grab the money, then escape through the back entrance where their getaway car is waiting. Any questions?

I’ve argued that Trump is going to mobilize the resources of the federal government to destroy his eventual opponent. Trump has already told Sean Hannity that Attorney General William P. Barr is looking into what he called “incredible” charges involving Ukraine and Hillary Clinton, no doubt at his suggestion. This is only the beginning of what Trump is going to pull, and there’s every reason to think that he feels utterly unrestrained by law or ethics.

That Trump would do this at all is shocking and despicable. That he would do it so openly is proof that he really does think he can get away with anything.

C'est la vie. Just another day in Trumpland. Move along; nothing to see here.