Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) reversed gears today, announcing that he doesn’t care about anything 73-year-old President Donald Trump said to 40-year-old Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. House Democrats, led by Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and backed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), insist Trump engaged in high-crimes-and-misdemeanors asking Zelensky to look into Joe and Hunter Biden in exchange for releasing $480 million in military aid. Schiff couldn’t find anything impeachable March 23 in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Final Report, where 75-year-old former FBI Director spent 22-months and $30 million investigating Trump’s alleged ties to Moscow. Mueller found no ties, upending Democrats plans to impeach Trump. A few months later, Schiff announces the presence of a “whistleblower” complaint about Trump’s July 25 call with Zelensky.
Democrats say that Trump engaged in a quid pro quo, insisting Zelensky dig up dirt on the Bidens in exchange for military aid. Charging Trump with high-crimes-and-misdemeanors, House Democrats placed Trump in Double-Jeopardy after he was essentially acquitted in the 22-month long Mueller investigation. Graham finally got it that no matter what Mueller found, House Democrats were hell-bent on impeaching the 45th president. “I’ve written the whole process off,” Graham told the media today. “I think this is a bunch of BS,” putting Democrats on notice that they won’t fair well at a Senate impeachment trial. Few political analysts expect Trump to be removed from office, regardless of the Democrats’ impeachment case against Trump. Spending weeks interviewing witnesses behind closed doors, Schiff thinks he’s built a credible case against Trump.
Revising his testimony today, Amb. Gordon Sondland, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, said he now recalls some sort of quid pro quo, the exact crime Democrats insist is impeachable. Graham said Oct. 20 he was open to hearing evidence about any quid pro quo but said Trump committed no impeachable offense. Watching Democrats move relentlessly behind closed doors to impeachment, Graham has finally seen enough. Today’s testimony from Sondland was misrepresented by Democrats and the mainstream press. Sondland said he recalls something about a quid pro quo but not that Trump withheld Ukraine’s cash for dirt on the Bidens. What he said was there were concerns about Ukrainian corruption, going beyond Hunter Biden collecting $150,000 a month from Ukraine’s Burisma Holdings’ board. Sondland’s change of testimony offers no smoking gun.
Testimony behind closed doors of Sondland, former Ukraine Amb. Kurt Volker, former Ukraine Amb. Marie Yavanovitch and State Department official Michael McKinley all suggest Trump was seeking information about a 2016 election conspiracy theory that Ukraine helped former State Department Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton. Schiff insists that Trump was looking into former Vice President Joe Biden’s ties to Ukraine in 2014 when he headed former President Barack Obama’s anti-corruption Ukraine task force. Landing his son Hunter a lucrative job on Burisma’s board smacked of corruption, whether it was legal or not. House Democrats and the press focus only on Joe, when Trump’s main interest was Hunter. Hunter was the one receiving millions from a small Ukrainian natural gas company, not Joe. Why Hunter Biden is off limits for a corruption probe is anyone’s guess.
Graham thought he’d keep an open mind about Trump’s July 25 phone call with Zelensky, until he realized that Democrats robbed Trump of due process. “If you’re looking for a circumstance where the president of the United States was threatening the Urkaine with cutting off aid unless they investigated his political opponent, you’d be very disappointed,” Graham told reporters in late September. “That does not exist,” realizing Democrats want to do and say anything to impeach Trump. Democrats want the public to think that Graham has changed his tune for political reasons. Graham’s decision to call the whole impeachment process “BS,” stems from his belief that the commander-in-chief can inquire about corruption wherever he wants. House Democrats and the media focus on Joe when Trump was more interested in finding out whether or not Hunter Biden engaged in corruption.
Graham opposes Democrats’ impeachment inquiry because he doesn’t b believe Trump did anything wrong in his July 25 call with Zelensky. Even the worst-case scenario that Trump sought a quid pro quo, Graham doesn’t believe it rises to an impeachable offense. When you consider Democrats couldn’t get Trump with Mueller’s 22-month, $30 million investigation, they found another way with an anonymous “whistleblower” complaint. Unless whistleblower complaints related to consumer protection, going after Trump criminally opens up another can of worms. When Democrats agreed to allow Mueller to be the ”trier of fact” in the Mueller probe, they said his word was final, accepting his findings. Once Mueller gave his March 23 Final Report, Democrats felt defeated. Graham sees that the latest attempt to remove Trump from office as nothing but a farce.
