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Sr. Admin Official Set Trump Up for Impeachment, Literally Created Fake Quid Pro Quo on Ukraine Aid

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House Republicans released an 18-page memo on Tuesday tearing into the impeachment efforts of their Democratic colleagues.

The document is filled with facts and testimony that take a sledgehammer to the left’s allegations of a quid pro quo arrangement between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Buried near the end of the memo is testimony from diplomats Kurt Volker and Bill Taylor that expose a massive betrayal inside the administration designed to set the president of the United States up for impeachment.

The key testimony concerns delayed U.S. security aid to Ukraine.

According to the memo, “the two U.S. diplomats closest the Ukrainian government — Ambassador Volker and Ambassador Taylor — testified that Ukraine did not know about the delay ‘until the end of August,’ six weeks later [than a July 18 interagency call in which the hold on aid was announced], after it was reported publicly on August 28.”

The memo goes on to quote Volker.

“In my view, this hold on security assistance was not significant. I don’t believe — in fact, I am quite sure that at least I, Secretary Pompeo, and official representatives of the U.S., never communicated to Ukrainians that [the aid] is being held for a reason. We never had a reason. And I tried to avoid talking to Ukrainians about it for as long as I could until it came out in Politico a month later because I was confident we were going to get it fixed internally.”

The importance of that quote and the Politico piece it references cannot be overstated.

Do you think the official who leaked to Politico was trying to undermine the administration?

Volker, the U.S. special representative for Ukraine until Sept. 27, said that he worked to avoid telling the Ukrainians about the delay. That comment is diametrically opposed to the narrative that House Democrats and the establishment media have been pushing — that Trump was holding security aid hostage until Zelensky publicly announced an investigation of Biden.

If the Ukrainians didn’t learn of the aid delay from Volker or others in the administration, how did they find out? They found out through the Aug. 28 Politico story, titled “Trump holds up Ukraine military aid meant to confront Russia.”

And where did Politico get its information for that piece? From an anonymous “senior administration official.”

A senior administration official leaked to Politico that security aid to Ukraine was being held up by Trump himself.

Again, according to the GOP memo, Volker and Taylor said that Ukraine didn’t even know about the delay until the Politico story broke.

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That means that until Aug. 28, absolutely no quid pro quo could have existed between Trump and Zelensky involving security aid. And while that’s not exactly news, what comes next is.

It’s reasonable to presume, based on Volker’s testimony, that had the senior administration official not leaked to Politico, Zelensky never would have known about the hold.

Remember, Volker testified that because Ukrainian officials didn’t know about the hold on aid, he “was confident we were going to get it fixed internally.” In other words, Zelensky wouldn’t even know there had been an issue.

Where, then, did the security aid quid pro quo narrative come from? It had to have come from that senior administration official. Without the official’s leak, no quid pro quo, real or ginned up, could exist because Ukraine would have remained unaware of any aid issues until the whistleblower’s report.

And that report didn’t come out until Sept. 26 — 15 days after the administration released the aid.

All of this means that a senior administration official single-handedly created the security aid quid pro quo story for the media to broadcast everywhere. He leaked it to Politico and Politico ran the story two weeks to the day after the so-called whistleblower filed his official complaint.

If all of this sounds familiar, that’s because it is the exact play Democrats and the establishment media used to spin up the Russia collusion fraud in 2017.

That time it was Comey leaking to CNN, CNN running the story and then the rest of the media and Democrats breathlessly reporting on the accusation they created. This time it’s the unidentified senior administration official leaking to Politico, Politico running the story and then the rest of the media and Democrats breathlessly reporting on the accusation they created.

The game plan is the same, all the way down to a trusted member of the administration being the leaker. The game plan was identical and the end goal was identical — impeachment of a duly elected president whom the establishment loathes. In other words, the objective has always been a soft coup.

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Voters, however, aren’t going to stand for this, as evidenced by the polling numbers on impeachment since House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff started his secret SCIF hearings.

If Democrats and the establishment media had any sense they would retreat before they’re ruined. That, however, is unlikely.

Both groups have become monomaniacal, no longer behaving rationally.

Cliché as it sounds, Trump has become their white whale.

When Starbuck warns of Ahab’s blind madness in Melville’s novel, Ahab says of the whale, “He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him.”

Trump tasks and heaps the left with his tweets, his deafening helicopter news conferences, his sold-out rallies, his blithe accusations of fake news, his disregard for Washington’s sacred cows and his refusal to bow to the Democrats’ globalist, socialist sensibilities. They see in him a strength and malice they’ve never faced before. They hate him whether he is using or being used by conservatism and the American spirit.

They will wreak their hate upon him.

That hate is consuming them even now, blinding them to the absurdity of their efforts.

And their farcical little play is driving voters right into the arms of a waiting Donald J. Trump.

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Josh Manning is a contributing editor at The Western Journal. He holds a masters in public policy from Harvard University and has a background in higher education. He recently co-authored Out of the Shadows: My Life Inside the Wild World of Hunter Biden, the tell-all memoir of Lunden Roberts's tumultuous relationship with Hunter Biden and Stolen Valor: The Military Fraud and Government Failures of Tim Walz.
Josh Manning grew up outside of Memphis, TN and developed a love of history, politics, and government studies thanks to a life-changing history and civics teacher named Mr. McBride.

He holds an MPP from Harvard University and a BA from Lyon College, a small but distinguished liberal arts college where later in his career he served as an interim vice president.

While in school he did everything possible to confront, discomfit, and drive ivy league liberals to their knees.

After a number of years working in academe, he moved to digital journalism and opinion. Since that point, he has held various leadership positions at The Western Journal.

He's married to a gorgeous blonde who played in the 1998 NCAA women's basketball championship game, and he has two teens who hate doing dishes more than poison. He makes life possible for two boxers -- "Hank" Rearden Manning and "Tucker" Carlson Manning -- and a pitbull named Nikki Haley "Gracie" Manning.

He recently co-authored Out of the Shadows: My Life Inside the Wild World of Hunter Biden, the tell-all memoir of Lunden Roberts's tumultuous relationship with Hunter Biden and Stolen Valor: The Military Fraud and Government Failures of Tim Walz.
Education
MPP from Harvard University, BA from Lyon College
Location
Arkansas
Languages Spoken
English, tiny fragments of college French
Topics of Expertise
Writing, politics, Christianity, social media curation, higher education, firearms




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