We’re all waiting on the Transcripts. The transcripts. What will they say, will they tie Trump to the payments.
Let’s step back. We don’t need them. In fact they won’t help.
Everyone is focusing on the Transcripts the PRECISE words. Guess what they don’t matter and probably their focus weakens the motive (the way they’ll be used unless he really is dumber than I already think).
1.) He already looks to have committed the crime
Credit to Kurious for quoting this to me elsewhere:
““The question of whether or not there is an explicit proffer of a quid pro quo inthe phone call is irrelevant….” (Eugene Robinson on MSNBC’s Morning Joe this am)”
This is the kind of thing that prosecutors overhear on wiretaps of organized crime figures all the time, you know: You’ve got a nice little Eastern half of the country there. It’d be a shame if anything happened to it, and you didn’t get your military aid—and by the way, you need to investigate my potential rival for the Presidency.
…The facts we know already are just on their face impeachable. This is insane. This cannot happen, it cannot happen in the United States of America—maybe in Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or someplace like that, but not in the United States of America. This is not the way our country does business. It’s the way Donald Trump does business...
2. Guess what. He won’t be dumb enough to say “hey you want people to have money/guns and not get killed in the East? Well how bout we talk Biden”
Already people are talking framing.
Here the comparison with Trump becomes, for the moment, a question mark, since we don't know exactly how the discussion of the Bidens was framed in the phone conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. And now the President seems to be saying he wants to release a transcript of the call.
www.cnn.com/…
Remember the Cohen testimony. “Did he directly tell you to lie”. No. He just said _____ “there’s no trump russia” “that’s how the President talks”. That’s how EVERYONE talks.
So I posit to you, the timing, the context are enough. How often does he talk to the Ukraine? How often does he freeze funds to other countries. Shouldn’t that matter a hell of a lot more?
He already admitted to discussing it — guess what — cuz he knows he never directly said it. But, I’m pretty sure motive is pretty clear. I’m guessing any prosecutors out there will say you don’t need an admission of guilt in every crime. APparently in trump world we do.
Be ready to be let down by transcripts I’m guessing Robinson’s quote would be exoneration per fox. Change the goal posts. Say there’s enough we don’t even care, then he shows them and tries to make this play.