So the news overnight, as reported in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post is this.
Trump Put Hold on Military Aid Ahead of Phone Call With Ukraine’s President
Trump Said to Have Frozen Aid to Ukraine Before Call With Its Leader
Trump ordered hold on Ukraine aid before calling its leader, officials say
The demands by Democrats for impeachment are increasing, the calls to release the transcript of the Trump-Ukraine call rising.
As mentioned nearby, Democrats and their media allies need to be very careful here. Why?
As noted — and as Sean Hannity emphasized yesterday by repeated replays of the soundbite — here is then-former Vice President Biden saying this about his role in getting a Ukrainian prosecutor fired — a prosecutor who was investigating Biden’s son Hunter Biden. Said Joe of his conversation with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko:
I said, “You’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in,” I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: “I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.”
Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.
In short, Biden did exactly what Democrats are now demanding Trump be impeached for doing — with one big difference. Biden was using U.S. financial aid as leverage to stop an investigation of his son Hunter Biden; Trump was, if true, demanding an investigation into Biden’s shenanigans.
The bottom line here?
The move to impeach Trump may well trigger demands like this one from South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, made in an interview with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo:
I’m calling for somebody in the Justice Department to look at all things Ukraine… Joe Biden said everybody’s looked at this and found nothing. Who is everybody? Nobody has looked at the Ukraine and the Bidens.…
There’s enough smoke here…. Was there a relationship between the vice president’s family and the Ukraine business world that was inappropriate? I don’t know. Somebody other than me needs to look at it and I don’t trust the media to get to the bottom of it.
Exactly.
In this climate it is easy to imagine an investigation into the Bidens and also President Obama on Ukraine. In that same comment on what he told the Ukrainian president, Biden also boasted that if the Ukrainian leader called President Obama he would get the same demand to fire the prosecutor as Biden was giving him.
This can easily lead to demands that all conversations and communications between Obama and Biden on the subject be made public. It could also open the door to not just investigations of both men but also their indictments for using U.S. financial aid as leverage to halt a criminal investigation by the Ukrainian prosecutor into Hunter Biden.
As the old saying goes, Democrats may want to be very careful what they wish for.