{"articles":[{"reaction_config":[{"text":"Yes","color":"#624960","stance":"yes"},{"text":"Maybe","color":"#edb723","stance":"maybe"},{"text":"No","color":"#4ac6ec","stance":"no"}],"id":37583,"title":"Is a Quid Pro Quo with Ukraine an Impeachable Offense?","html_content":"

by Countable's Trump Impeachment Coverage | 11.7.19

What’s the story?

It’s beginning to look a lot like a quid pro quo.
But even if President Donald Trump did - as alleged by various witnesses - tie Ukraine aid to Kiev’s investigation into his political rival, would it be an impeachable offense?
“We put conditions on aid all the time,” argued Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said. “But if you said, ‘I’m not going to give you money unless you investigate my political opponent to help me politically,’ that would be completely out of bounds.”
Later, in separate statements, Graham argued that the Trump administration was incapable of a quid pro quo with Ukrainian President Vladomyr Zelensky.

\"What I can tell you about the Trump policy toward Ukraine: It was incoherent, it depends on who you talk to, they seem to be incapable of forming a quid pro quo. So no, I find the whole process to be a sham and I'm not going to legitimize it.\"

Robert G. Natelson, a constitutional scholar with the Independence Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank, made a similar argument.
“All this discussion of quid pro quo is really a smokescreen,” Natelson said. “Even if it were a quid pro quo, I think it is rather clearly neither a felony nor a misdemeanor.”

“It is not a breach of fiduciary duty for a president to make aid to another country conditional, and it is certainly not a breach of fiduciary duty for the president to ask the other country to investigate possible involvement in an American election,” Natelson told the right-leaning Washington Times.

Who said it’s quid pro quo?

Four key witnesses - Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor, White House adviser Timothy Morrison, and Ambassador to the E.U. Gordon Sondland – have testified that congressionally-approved military aid to Ukraine was contingent on Kiev publicly announcing they were opening an investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden and the 2016 election.
\"I now recall speaking individually with [Zelensky’s personal aide], where I said resumption of U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anti-corruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks,\" Sondland said in a three-page revision to his earlier testimony.

“I presumed that the aid suspension had become linked to the proposed anticorruption statement,” Sondland added.

What do you think?

If Trump did base aid to Ukraine on a quid pro quo, is it an impeachable offense? Take action and tell your reps, then share your thoughts below.

—Josh Herman

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