CLAIM: President Donald Trump never cared about corruption in Ukraine.
VERDICT: FALSE. Democrats’ own investigation showed that he did — long before Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and Burisma were an issue.
Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO) opened the fourth day of the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump by mocking the idea that Trump cared about corruption in Ukraine. “It’s difficult to even say that with a straight face,” he said.
Crow, who has also been blaming President Trump — falsely — for Ukrainian deaths, repeated the false claim made by lead House impeachment manager Adam Schiff (D-CA) earlier this week that Trump only cared about corruption in Ukraine once it involved former Vice President Joe Biden, his potential rival in the 2020 presidential election.
Actually, even if it were true that Trump only cared about allegations of corruption against Biden involving a foreign country because he was a political rival, that would have been a legitimate reason — according to Schiff himself.
Last April, Schiff wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Post: “If a foreign power possessed compromising information on a U.S. government official in a position of influence, that is a counterintelligence risk. If a foreign power possessed leverage, or the perception of it, over the president, that is a counterintelligence nightmare.”
Schiff was defending the Obama administration’s decision to launch an investigation into Trump, who was then the Republican nominee for president. But the same logic would apply to Biden: it is in the national interest to know. full story
