That President Trump’s press secretary claims the House Intelligence Committee’s report “reads like the ramblings of a basement blogger straining to prove something when there is evidence of nothing” is the surest sign that Adam Schiff just delivered a compelling, coherent presentation of what happened when Trump leaned on the levers of government to try to get Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky to gin up an investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden.
The report relies on indisputable documentary evidence and sworn testimony to weave together a clean, understandable narrative that ought to alarm anyone who cares about decent presidential behavior and fair play in U.S. elections.
Trump, the writeup makes clear, worked in lockstep with his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and his EU ambassador, Gordon Sondland, to try to force the Ukrainian government to publicly commit to investigating Burisma, the company on whose board the younger Biden served, as well as lend credence to a crazy, discredited theory about the whereabouts of the 2016 Democratic National Committee computer server.
Trump conditioned a Zelensky White House meeting on Ukraine announcing those sought-after investigations. He froze $391 million in congressionally-mandated military assistance, even as “the uniform and consistent position of all policymaking agencies supported the release of the funding.”
Trump then urged Zelensky to deliver the 2020 election interference he coveted, and followed through to ratchet up pressure through other channels, until the whistle was blown on the plot.
To top it off, Trump stonewalled the inquiry, refusing to let aides testify, intimidating witnesses and refusing to produce subpoenaed documents.
There may be no single, smoking gun, but there’s ample acrid black stuff rising from the White House.
![In a narrow vote this week, the Federal Trade Commission approved a rule that will ban the vast majority of noncompete clauses by U.S. employers, which have long prevented workers from switching jobs or setting out on their own. In doing so, the agency did its duty to protect American economic dynamism and opportunity, nothing less, nothing more. We hope that’s the clear conclusion of the courts that will now rule on a lawsuit being brought by the Chamber of Commerce, which has strenuously supported this anticompetitive practice. Of the arguments that the business group and other opponents have rolled […]](https://www.nydailynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/GettyImages-1820955015.jpg?w=490 "In a narrow vote this week, the Federal Trade Commission approved a rule that will ban the vast majority of noncompete clauses by U.S. employers, which have long prevented workers from switching jobs or setting out on their own. In doing so, the agency did its duty to protect American economic dynamism and opportunity, nothing less, nothing more. We hope that’s the clear conclusion of the courts that will now rule on a lawsuit being brought by the Chamber of Commerce, which has strenuously supported this anticompetitive practice. Of the arguments that the business group and other opponents have rolled […]")
