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President Trump today publicly asked Ukraine and China to investigate Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden.

This echoed a request Trump made privately to the new leader of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, according to White House transcripts of their phone call. 

By doing this in public, Trump inoculates himself from the potential of a “bombshell” coming out in the press, and he can claim that there was nothing wrong about the request because he made it openly in front of the cameras.

But remember: Doing it in public doesn’t negate the fact that Trump is still asking a foreign government to get involved in the 2020 presidential election and investigate his chief political rival. 

Trump’s private request for Zelensky was referred to the Justice Department as a potential violation of campaign finance laws. The Justice Department did not launch a full investigation but determined that there was not evidence to prove that Trump did anything illegal. 

This situation has some parallels to the Mueller investigation. Special counsel Robert Mueller examined plenty of comments that Trump made publicly, to determine whether Trump was obstructing justice. Mueller’s team wrote in their report that, regarding obstruction laws, there wasn’t any difference between Trump saying something in public, versus Trump saying the same thing in private. The Mueller report regularly cited Trump’s public remarks and tweets as proof of his wrongdoing or of his intention to obstruct the investigation. 

Here’s one key excerpt from the Mueller report…

…and another: