5. White House acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney confirmed at a press conference that the aid was withheld in part to pressure Ukraine into investigating the DNC server conspiracy theory. Asked if there was a quid pro quo, Mulvaney responded, “We do that all the time with foreign policy.” (Mulvaney subsequently distanced himself from that answer in a written statement, one almost completely devoid of credibility, since his original comments had, after all, been filmed and recorded.)

6. Further, as additionally revealed in text messages between the U.S. ambassador to the European Union (Gordon Sondland, also a major Trump donor), a now ex-special U.S. envoy to Ukraine (Kurt Volker, who has since resigned), and a career U.S. diplomat in Ukraine (William B. “Bill” Taylor), the “most imp[ortan]t” reason for Trump’s call with Zelensky was to get Zelensky to commit to engaging in that investigation of the Bidens. These exchanges also explicitly stipulate that a future visit to the White House for this foreign leader was to be contingent on him delivering on the promise to dig up dirt on Hunter Biden.

7. And if all that weren’t enough, Ambassador Taylor, Ambassador Sondland, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman (an expert on Ukrainian affairs serving on the National Security Council staff), and former National Security Council staffer Tim Morrison all provided sworn testimony to the House of Representatives confirming a quid pro quo. The evidence they’ve given plainly shows that Trump required Ukrainian officials to investigate Biden and the Democrats in exchange for reinstated military aid to Ukraine (to continue fighting Russian aggression), while also serving as a precondition for a planned meeting between presidents Zelensky and Trump.



In pursuing this quid pro quo arrangement with Zelensky, President Trump has been willing to use some of the most important powers of his office to manipulate the nation’s foreign policy in order to help his reelection prospects. These sorts of abuses were exactly the kind that the Framers feared could take root when they gave such significant powers to one individual—and they were the exact sorts of abuses that motivated them to ensure that a powerful chief executive could be removed through means other than the ballot box. George Mason asked, apropos of such abuses, whether “the man who has practi[c]ed corruption & by that means procured his appointment in the first instance, be suffered to escape punishment, by repeating his guilt.” William Richardson Davie worried that a president might be tempted to use any “efforts or means whatever to get himself re-elected.” (Remember that in the original Constitution, which Mason and Davie were debating when they made these remarks, presidents could be reelected repeatedly because there was no term limit on the presidency until the Twenty-Second Amendment was ratified in 1951.) President Trump has brazenly disregarded the Framers’ well-founded fear of foreign influence in our republic’s affairs to benefit his own political prospects, inviting such unlawful interference and distorting American democracy.