The material below is taken from my Amazon Kindle book, Six Essays on the Impeachment of Donald J Trump (15 pages)
Article I of the House impeachment correctly mentions, as was brought out by witness testimony, that President Trump’s aim was to secure announcements of investigations rather than the investigation themselves. U.S. Attorney John Durham is pursuing a criminal investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation. Notably, he has not announced the targets of his investigation because Justice Department policy is to not reveal the names of targets of an investigation unless and until an indictment is secured (doing so and allegedly lying about it was the origin of Andrew McCabe’s troubles). Ukraine apparently has no such restrictions so that securing a Ukrainian announcement was essentially an end run around Justice Department policy.
In the transcript of the July 25th call between President Trump and President Zelensky, Zelensky purportedly said in response to President’s Trump denigration of Ambassador Yovanovitch, “ It was great that you were the first one who told me she was a bad ambassador because I agree with you 100%. Her attitude towards me was far from the best as she admired the previous President and she was on his side. She would not accept me as a new President well enough.”
Numerous officials have testified that Marie Yovanovitch is an experienced and exemplary diplomat and that therefore the above must be false. No American diplomat would refuse to accept a leader selected in a legitimate election.
In a prior article, Donald Trump Altered the Zelenskiy Transcript (second edition), I argued that President Trump directed a transcript that did not accurately reflect the conversation. This was written prior to Lt Colonel Alexander Vindman’s (who speaks Ukranian and English) testimony. Vindman’s testimony does not confirm my suspicions concerning the transcript. Of course Vindman was testifying under subpoena and might have confined his testimony to what he was asked. In any case we are left with the following:
Zelensky’s remarks regarding Yovanovitch were false.
Then either Zelensky never actually said them (altered transcript)
or
Zelensky was so anxious to kiss Donald Trump’s ass and secure the military aid and White House visit that he deliberately and maliciously made false statements concerning Ambassador Yovanovitch.
or
Portions of Zelensky’s conversation were read from a script provided in advance by the Trump administration.
I do not believe there are any other possible explanations and they all support an abuse of power charge or an obstruction charge.
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