President Donald Trump arrives during a rally at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, Ga., on Nov. 8, 2019. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

Trump Will Be ‘Thriving’ as a Result of Impeachment Inquiry: Top Campaign Official

Tim Murtaugh, the communications director of the Trump 2020 campaign, said that the president and his campaign will be “thriving” as a result of the impeachment inquiry.

“We’re going to do a lot better than just survive it,” Murtaugh said Tuesday on Hill.TV. “The campaign and the president is going to be thriving as a result of this.”

He said the impeachment inquiry is clearly partisan and added that “this may as well be branded the ‘DNC impeachment.'”

Murtaugh also countered the “quid pro quo” allegation that has been raised by House Democrats in the inquiry.

“The Democrats have been talking about a ‘quid pro quo,’ that means in Latin ‘this for that,'” he told the station. “Well let’s talk about this: the people in Ukraine, they’ve said that they felt no pressure—they didn’t know they were being pressured. They also didn’t know that any military aid was being withheld.”

“Then, the aid began to flow,” he added. “And finally, the Ukrainians didn’t have to do anything in order to get the aid to flow.”

President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign and the Republican National Committee pulled in $125 million in fundraising in the third quarter.

Murtaugh told The Hill on Tuesday that some $15 million had come from online donations within three days after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) formally announced the impeachment inquiry on Sept. 24.

“Every time the media and the Democrats go in a frenzy like this, our campaign raises a ton of money, which means we have greater interaction with voters online, which means our data gets better,” he told Hill.TV.

The House Intelligence Committee is set to hold the first public impeachment inquiry hearing on Wednesday, when Ambassador William Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, and George Kent, deputy assistant secretary for European affairs, will be testifying.

Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, will testify on Friday.

House Democrats launched the impeachment inquiry based on an anonymous whistleblower complaint about a July 25 phone call Trump had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. They have accused Trump of leveraging the power of his office and withholding U.S. aid to pressure Ukraine to investigate and obtain information on a political opponent—2020 Democratic candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden.

Trump has denied wrongdoing, saying that his request to Ukraine was to investigate allegations of corruption. Zelensky has told reporters he didn’t feel pressured by Trump.

Democrats insist that there was a “quid pro quo” and are continuing to look for evidence that would link the Trump administration’s review of military aid to Ukraine to the investigations Trump asked of Zelensky in the phone call.

Trump has told reporters that he had temporarily blocked the aid to Ukraine because of high levels of corruption in the country, and to spur European partners to shoulder a greater share of security assistance.

Ukrainians were unaware of a hold on aid until weeks after the July 25 call, according to Taylor’s testimony to House lawmakers on Oct. 22.

Trump confirmed to reporters on Nov. 8 that he had spoken to Zelensky in another phone call in April, and said he will probably release the transcript of that call.