Republicans, Planning Impeachment Defense, Argue Trump Did Nothing Wrong – The New York Times

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Republicans have already signaled that they intend to use the hearings as a platform to shift the discussion away from Mr. Trump and toward a series of largely debunked conspiracy theories about Democrats, including the business dealings of Hunter Biden while his father, who is now a Democratic candidate for president, was vice president.

But the memo circulated Monday night indicates that the president’s defenders will try to defend the president’s actions toward Ukraine as well. It urges lawmakers to argue that Mr. Trump’s July 25 call with Mr. Zelensky shows “no conditionality or evidence of pressure” on the president of Ukraine. In the reconstructed transcript of the call, when Mr. Zelensky brought up his desire to purchase defense weaponry, Mr. Trump said he wanted the Ukrainian president to “do us a favor, though” and then mentioned the investigations into the Bidens.

The memo also makes a broader case that there was no pressure on Mr. Zelensky because the Ukrainians were not aware that the United States was withholding promised security assistance, and that the aid was ultimately released without Ukraine committing to the investigations that Mr. Trump wanted.

In fact, officials have testified that some Ukrainian officials were aware that the aid had been frozen by the Trump administration, and were told by a top American diplomat that they would probably not receive it unless the investigations were publicly announced. And while the aid was eventually released, it occurred only after the Trump administration knew that a whistle-blower had filed a confidential complaint about the July 25 call. That complaint alleged that the freezing of the aid was part of a broader abuse of power by Mr. Trump in an effort to better his political chances in 2020.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/us/politics/impeachment-strategy-republicans.html

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