In May 2018, three Democrat senators asked Ukraine to help investigate President Trump vis-à-vis Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of “Russian meddling” in the 2016 election.
Their goal was proving “collusion” between Russia and the Trump campaign to defeat Hillary Clinton, a tale the Democrats and the Fake News media manufactured to reverse the results of the 2016 election.
Mueller’s long investigation found zero collusion, but the important point here is that three Democrats sought Ukraine’s help to investigate Trump.
Yet Democrats want to impeach Trump for making a similar request.
During a phone call on July 25, Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to help investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s role in sacking the country’s top prosecutor in March 2016. At the time, the prosecutor was probing a corruption scandal that involved Hunter Biden, the former vice president’s son.
The Letter
The letter from three hard-left senators, Dick Durban of Illinois, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, and Robert Menendez of New Jersey, went to Yuriy Lutsenko, Ukraine’s general prosecutor.
The three wrote “to express great concern about reports that your office has taken steps to impede cooperation with the investigation of United States Special Counsel Robert Mueller.”
U.S.-Ukraine relations, they wrote, are “built on a foundation of respect for the rule of law and accountable democratic institutions. In four short years, Ukraine has made significant progress in building these institutions despite ongoing military, economic and political pressure from Moscow.”
But the senators didn’t think Ukraine had much respect for the rule of law, or that the U.S.-Ukraine relationship “should extend to such legal matters” as the Mueller probe. “Disappointed that some in Kyiv appear to have cast aside these principles in order to avoid the ire of President Trump,” they “strongly encourag[ed]” Lutsenko to start cooperating.
The New York Times alerted the senators to the problem, they wrote. It reported that “your office effectively froze investigations into four open cases in Ukraine in April, thereby eliminating scope for cooperation with the Mueller probe into related issues.”
The letter also raised the Times’s charge that the cases were dropped because they were “too politically sensitive and potentially jeopardizing U.S. financial and military aid to Ukraine,” and that “your office prohibited ... subpoenas for evidence or interviewing witnesses in four open cases in Ukraine related to consulting work performed by Paul Manafort for former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich and his political party.”
The senators added that cooperating in what turned out to be a snipe hunt would be good for Ukraine because “Ukrainian law enforcement [could] conduct a more thorough inquiry into possible crimes committed” during the presidency of President Viktor Yanukovych.
“This reported refusal to cooperate with the Mueller probe also sends a worrying signal — to the Ukrainian people as well as the international community — about your government’s commitment more broadly to support justice and the rule of law.”
Help Us Get Trump
Then came three questions the three leftists hoped would elicit proof that Trump was trying to impede the Mueller probe. “Has your office taken any steps to restrict cooperation with the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller?” they asked. “If so, why?”
And, the senators wanted to know, “Did any individual from the Trump Administration, or anyone acting on its behalf, encourage Ukrainian government or law enforcement officials not to cooperate with the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller?”
Third, “Was the Mueller probe raised in any way during discussions between your government and U.S. officials, including around the meeting of Presidents Trump and Poroshenko in New York in 2017?”
Lutsenko doesn’t appear to have answered the missive, which invited Ukraine to meddle in an American criminal investigation and collude with Democrats in attacking the president.
No Questions About Biden
The three Democrats did not, apparently, write a similar letter asking about the Biden-Ukraine prosecutor scandal.
In March 2016, Biden pushed then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin at a time when Hunter Biden was on the board of a natural gas company the prosecutor was investigating. That company, Burisma Holdings, paid the younger Biden’s outfit more than $3 million. Hunter Biden collected an exorbitant salary.
Nor have the three Democrats inquired about the Obama administration’s defense of the Biden-Burisma connection or the Obama campaign’s failure to vet Hunter Biden, as the FreeBeacon recalled yesterday, as part of its routine background check on a running mate.
In August, the Times reported that Obama’s 2008 campaign people were worried about “problems stemming from Mr. Biden’s son Hunter, including complications from his lobbying work and indications of marital, legal and substance-abuse problems.”
But “when an Obama campaign official flagged the issue, Mr. Biden grew angry and warned, ‘Keep my family out of this.’ The issue was dropped.”
