While Dems Screech for Impeachment, Their ‘Ukraine Collusion’ Accusation Keeps Unraveling

Wes WalkerSeptember 24, 2019

29 3 minutes read

With the Mueller report dead, Dems are pinning their NEW hopes on Collusion Story 2.0. … now with Ukraine!

And they’re getting LOUD about it, too!

Besides the predictable ones from 2020 candidates out-‘woke’-ing one another in painting Trump as somehow ‘lawless’ and dangerous (with a conspicuous silence about the Hunter Biden allegations), there have been some attitudinal shifts in Congress itself.

The most significant position shifts on Monday came from at least six moderate freshmen who had previously expressed opposition to the caucus moving forward with impeachment — Reps. Dean Phillips of Minnesota, Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, Elaine Luria of Virginia, Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Abigail Spanberger of Virginia.

Phillips was first to speak on the matter, putting out a statement Monday afternoon saying, “If the reports are corroborated, we must pursue articles of impeachment and report them to the full House of Representatives for immediate consideration.”

Houlahan, Luria, Sherrill, Slotkin and Spanberger published an op-ed in the Washington Post Monday night with Reps. Gil Cisneros of California and Jason Crow of Colorado saying that if the allegations against Trump are true, they “represent an impeachable offense.”
Source: RollCall

The party’s HARD Left, predictably, went all-in on banging that impeachment drum. Two consecutive social media posts by AOC, one a retweet, the other written herself:

For the sake of our Constitution, and for the sake of our country:

Donald Trump must be impeached, convicted in the Senate, removed from office, and face criminal trial.

— US Rep Brendan Boyle (@RepBrendanBoyle) September 21, 2019

It is one thing for a sitting president to break the law. It’s another to let him.

The integrity of our democracy isn’t threatened when a president breaks the law. It‘s threatened when we do nothing about it.

The GOP’s silence & refusal to act shouldn’t be a surprise. Ours is.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) September 22, 2019

But they may have jumped the gun JUST a little bit…

For one thing, the ‘whistleblower’ they claim to have has been independently confirmed by reporters to have had ‘NO direct knowledge’ of the phone calls in question. Considering this point was (hidden in) the very end of the original CNN piece that raised this issue. (This is known as ‘burying the lead’ and another example of why we call them Fake News.)

For another, Ukraine, in their own words, does not think they were coerced.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko on Saturday denied suggestions U.S. President Donald Trump had put pressure on Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy during a phone call in July.

…Zelenskiy’s office has so far declined to comment on the allegations.

“I know what the conversation was about and I think there was no pressure,” Prystaiko said. “This conversation was long, friendly, and it touched on many questions, sometimes requiring serious answers.”

…Trump had spoken Zelenskiy less than three weeks before the complaint was filed. Trump is due to meet Zelenskiy during a United Nations gathering in New York.

Prystaiko said Zelenskiy had the right to keep conversations with other leaders confidential.

“I want to say that we are an independent state, we have our secrets,” he was quoted as saying in the interview.
Source: Reuters

Another story, supposedly presenting a possible ‘smoking gun’ came out:

News of Trump’s order to withhold aid to the Ukraine ahead of his July 25 call may trigger questions — and speculation — about the President’s motive in doing so.
The Washington Post was first to report that Trump told Mulvaney to put a hold on almost $400 million in military aid for Ukraine.
The administration was looking at harnessing multiple foreign packages, several aides believed, when Trump took a special interest in Ukraine, at times railing about how the country wasted money in his eyes. This surprised several staffers because, as CNN has reported, Trump had not been interested in engaging with Ukraine in the past, believing Ukraine was a corrupt country that wasn’t committed to reform.
But his attentiveness to the country had ramped up in recent weeks as his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani pushed muddled corruption accusations against Biden, who was leading in national polls against Trump, and his son Hunter.
Source: CNN

Trump responded to that accusation:

President Trump, when asked about his decision to block aid to Ukraine shortly before his call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, he said he “wanted other countries to put up money.”

“We paid the money,” he said, arguing that other European countries should help Ukraine with its defenses. “That’s been my complaint from the very beginning,” Mr. Trump added.
Source: CBS

You can judge for yourself, good Clash reader, whether that answer lines up with what we already know about his dealings with our allies in NATO paying their share of the costs.

Of course, the kneejerk Blame-Trump crowd, when reporting this in the first place went directly to the one place that even Mueller refused to go… in calling Trump demonstrating that he was somehow a Russian puppet by ‘slow-walking’ this Ukrainian Military aid.

Although, in closing, we do note that if Schiff thinks that ‘getting foreign help to hurt your political enemies’ is an impeachable act, he may want to begin impeachment proceedings… against himself: Schiff For Brains: Russian Comedians Punk Adam Schiff With ‘Putin’s Naked Pics Of Trump’

Related…