As Washington shook with the twin revelations of the rough transcript of Donald Trump's phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the whistleblower complaint, Republicans settled on one specious line of defense: There was no quid pro quo in terms of military aid for political favors. It was actually rather beside the point, since it's a felony to accept a "thing of value" from a foreign source in one's political campaign, period. But the White House and Republicans figured that if they could just keep Americans focused on the idea that no quid pro quo took place, they might be able to mitigate the impact of the gigantic iceberg lingering beneath the surface.
Stalwart Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said the hold-up in military aid was actually due to the Pentagon, not a quid pro quo. “The actual delay in aid was coming from the Pentagon as much as anybody else — because they didn’t know about the [Ukrainian] president and whether he could be trusted,” Graham told reporters just after reviewing the transcript of the July 25 phone call between the two leaders. “I’m glad the aid started flowing, so there is no quid pro quo,” Graham added.
Trump's House henchman, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, put forth the same defense while talking to NPR that week. "When you read the transcript, there is nothing there," Jordan said, "there was no quid pro quo.”
Both men, along with other Republicans, crowed over and over again about there being no hold-up in aid for a political favor. In fact, when the White House accidentally emailed its talking points to Democrats in early October, one read, “Let’s be clear, there was no quid pro quo for Ukraine to get U.S. aid in exchange for looking into Biden or his son.”
But that defense started to fall apart on Republicans when special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker handed over to investigators a tranche of texts containing exchanges about withholding military aide from Ukraine in exchange for a political favor. Career diplomat and the top U.S. official in Kyiv, Bill Taylor, famously texted the U.S. Ambassador to the E.U., Gordon Sondland, "As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.”
Sondland, following a five-hour hiatus in texting, finally responded by writing that Trump had been "crystal clear no quid pro quo's of any kind." Not so coincidentally, Sondland was on the Hill giving testimony Thursday at the very moment White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney stood at the briefing room podium to change the White House's story. Mulvaney advanced the idea that Trump wasn't withholding aid for an investigation into the Bidens; instead, he wanted an investigation into a conspiracy theory about a Democratic National Committee server in 2016.
ABC's Jon Karl repeated back to Mulvaney, "To be clear. What you just described is a quid pro quo. It is funding will not flow unless the investigation into the Democratic server happened, as well."
Mulvaney responded, "We do that all the time with foreign policy." And by "that," Mulvaney meant a quid pro quo for something that would benefit Trump politically.
The White House didn't just move the goal posts on a concocted defense that was irrelevant from the start; it tore the goal posts down altogether.
Watch it below.