After weeks of talking about Donald Trump’s crimes – bribery and extortion – Democrats have abandoned those words like they dropped the hot potato “quid quo pro.” As the WSJ explains, the new charge is “abuse of power,” which is generally broad enough “for anything Congress wants to stuff into it.”
(Democrats) don’t even pretend any more to prove a quid pro quo. Instead they assert that Mr. Trump, in his phone call with Ukraine’s president, “solicited the interference of a foreign government” in the 2020 election “in pursuit of personal political benefit.” They also assert that this “compromised the national security of the United States and undermined the integrity of the United States democratic process.”
Their problem is that Mr. Trump didn’t withhold military aid to Ukraine, and even if he had he would have merely been returning to Barack Obama’s policy of denying lethal aid. How would that have jeopardized national security? Every President also solicits actions from foreign leaders that he hopes will help him politically at home.
In mentioning Joe Biden in a call to the president of Ukraine, President Trump certainly could qualify as having used poor judgment. But, notes the WSJ, abuse of power on this evidence is “a new and low standard for impeachment that will come back to haunt future Presidents of all parties.”
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