Chairs Schiff, Engel and Cummings did a major document dump tonight based on texts exchanged between various Trump Department officials, Rudy Giuliani and a top advisor to President Zelensky. The upshot is documentation of months of efforts by the Trump officials to get Ukraine to publicly announce investigations of the Bidens and 2016 election collusion between Ukraine and the DNC in exchange for a White House meeting with President Trump and military aide to ward off Russian-backed separatists in the east.

What is important to note here is that the Ukraine-DNC collusion conspiracy theory, in addition to being crazy in itself, is in fact an exoneration of Russia. The idea is that Russia didn’t really interfere in the election. They were framed by Ukraine and the DNC. We’ve heard lots of talk about these ‘investigations’. But what seems more clear here is that the big “deliverable”, as Trump megadonor Gordon Sondland puts it in one text, is a public statement from Zelensky announcing these investigations. That in itself validates the key Trump/Giuliani conspiracy theories for domestic consumption in the United States and quite likely is the predicate for Bill Barr for announcing his own probes into the same.

It’s late. So I went through the document dump and tweeted out the key passages. I’ve assembled them together here.

Wicked abuse of office burn pic.twitter.com/y9pTZpTnhX — Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) October 4, 2019

2/ a number of quid pro quos. Here’s one. pic.twitter.com/XBZosOJlor — Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) October 4, 2019

3/ the president really wanted “the deliverable” pic.twitter.com/wyiypPrhJo — Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) October 4, 2019

4/ Ukraines agree in principle to announce investigations of Biden and 2016 UKR/dnc collusion but want to make sure first they have a confirmed date for Trump meeting. pic.twitter.com/04eSGtmFO7 — Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) October 4, 2019

5/ more discussion of quid pro quo #1, get the White House meeting for Biden investigation and dnc/Ukraine collusion probe. pic.twitter.com/NS58WUMKUc — Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) October 4, 2019

6/ Trump state department officials agree on language President of Ukraine will use to announce investigation of Biden company and Ukraine/DNC collusion. pic.twitter.com/JsWqooXpLV — Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) October 4, 2019

7/ Ukraine learns that Trump has upped the ante. Career diplo Taylor asks Trump megadonor Sondland to confirm existence of new quid pro quo. Arms for election interference. pic.twitter.com/htnZ6tW1bB — Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) October 4, 2019

8/ career diplo worries that Ukraine will be forced to exonerate Russia for election interferences and accuse themselves and then still get stiffed by Trump on the guns. pic.twitter.com/FNLDT4myZT — Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) October 4, 2019