The GOP's weak defense of Trump:
The July 25 call summary "shows no conditionality or evidence of pressure."Of course the call is evidence of pressure. Trump brings up the "investigations" he wants Ukraine to conduct three times in the context of a conversation about aid to the country. That is evidence. Conclusive evidence in and of itself? Maybe not. But Democrats have collected that elsewhere.
Ukrainian "President (Volodymyr) Zelensky and President Trump have both said there was no pressure on the call."
Take Trump's word for it! And of course Zelensky has no motive to back Trump on this. We have the reconstructed transcript, and can read what was said ourselves. And
multiple people on that call thought it was problematic, leading to it being buried in way that violated security protocol.
"The Ukrainian government was not aware of the hold on U.S. assistance" during the July 25 call.Ukraine was discussing how to deal with Trump's demands as early as May. That they didn't know about this particular avenue of extortion at this exact time is irrelevant. They would soon be made aware of it. And Trump had held up the assistance before this call took place.
The security assistance hold was lifted on September 11.After they were caught! The whistleblower complaint made it to the DOJ in late August, and they knew Schiff was about to bring their scheme into the open.
And we know Ukraine had at this point already agreed to make the public statement the Trump Administration was demanding. Only the complaint, and its getting into the open, stopped it from happening.
So their "defense" falls apart after an examination that took me all of three minutes to prepare. Good luck with that, GOP.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/12/politics/house-republicans-trump-memo-impeachment-defense/index.html