The meaning of what Trump told Sondland on Sept 7 is even clearer now that we know that the Sept 9 phone call never happened
The centerpiece of the Trump-Republican defense of Trump in the Ukraine matter has been an alleged phone call on September 9, when (Sondland has said) Trump told him that there was no quid pro quo and that he wanted nothing from Zelensky/Ukraine. 1/31
The problem with this centerpiece phone call is that it never occurred.
Two days ago WAPO presented evidence that there was no phone call between Sondland and Trump on Sept 9. 2/31
It’s a relatively long article. Aaron Blake has usefully highlighted the evidence in that article here: 3/31
Just Security published today a very long article on the matter by guest contributor Susan Simpson (@TheViewFromLL2).
Simpson shows that Sondland either misremembered what happened, or just made up the September 9 phone call. 4/31
Simpson shows that there was (as WAPO was apparently the first to suspect) only one phone call between Sondland and Trump, and that was the one that took place on September 7, 5/31
in which Trump must have laid out very clearly the conditions for a resolution of the “stalemate” even about the disbursement of military aid. 6/31
All that had in fact been previously negotiated between Trump and Zelensky (via Sondland and Yermak) in Warsaw on Sept 1. 7/31
It was Taylor’s realization that the release of even the military aid was conditioned on Zelensky’s satisfaction of Trump’s politically and personally interested demands that elicited Taylor’s alarmed query to Sondland in a text message on Sept 1: 8/31
Sondland testified later that in early to late September (he wasn’t sure when, but he thought it was Sept 9) he had spoken to Trump and asked him point-blank what he wanted from Ukraine, and that Trump told him: “There is no quid pro quo, I want nothing.” 9/31
The problem is that the Sept 9 call never occurred. The only one that did occur took place on Sept 7, and that call went very differently and had a very different meaning, 10/31
because it is clear that in that phone call Trump told Sondland to demand a public announcement of an investigation by Ukraine of the Bidens as well as an investigation into the claim (utterly baseless) that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election to assist Clinton. 11/31
In other words, it wasn’t nothing that Trump wanted from Ukraine. He never said he wanted nothing, and Trump made it perfectly clear what he did want. 12/31
Simpson’s piece is very long and detailed. It will stand, probably forever, as the definitive timeline of the events. And it is very useful, because putting a timeline together for these complicated events is difficult and tedious (I speak from personal experience). 13/31
However, there is a big problem here that Simpson (and everyone else in the commentariat) is missing. That problem is evident in the title of her Just Security article: “Here’s the Proof that Trump’s “No Quid Pro Quo” Call Never Happened.” 14/31
The problem is that the headline is plainly contradicted by Simpson’s own summary theory of the case: 15/31
We must not ignore the fact that Trump did say on September 7 that there was no quid pro quo. If we don’t ignore this fact, and consider what we know about the phone call carefully, it will yield its meaning — which is very alarming, 16/31
because it is clear on examination that what Trump must have been telling everyone (through Sondland) is that he (Zelensky) and Ukraine were being EXTORTED, not bribed. 17/31
Unlike a bribe, extortion is not a quid pro quo.
Bribery and quid pro quos involve two parties, more or less with equal standing, who are exchanging things in a mutually beneficial way. You give me something, and I give you something. 18/31
Extortion is very different. In extortion, a power imbalance is involved, where X has power over Y, and X either threatens to do something harmful to Y if Y doesn’t (unilaterally) hand over a benefit that X wants, 19/31
or X imply threatens to withhold something that Y needs (which is what happened in the Trump-Zelensky “negotiations”). 20/31
In other words, Trump was telling Sondland in no uncertain terms that he did not consider that he and Zelensky were in a relationship in which it was appropriate to speak of bribery (a quid pro quo) at all. 21/31
Trump was threatening/extorting Zelensky, pure and simple, and that is clear because we know that in the September 7 phone call, he went on to condition both the release of the military aid and any future WH meeting on his demands. 22/31
There are two other aspects of these “negotiations” to consider: 23/31
First, it is likely that one of the reasons Trump said there was “no quid pro quo” on Sept 7 is that he had been told by WH lawyers that a quid pro quo was illegal, and even that it constituted bribery, which is explicitly mentioned in the Constitution as impeachable. 24/31
In Trump’s twisted, confused, and utterly deficient mind, there may have been the thought that denying a quid pro quo would get around that problem, even if he then proceeded to lay down the conditions for granting the aid and the WH meeting. 25/31
Indeed, such is the corruption of the Republican party under Trump that we can imagine that many Republicans believe this line might help with Trump’s defense, because, while bribery is specifically mentioned in the Constitution, extortion is not!
(Good luck with that.) 26/31
Second, it is only when it is understood that Trump told Sondland on Sept 7 to tell everyone that Ukraine was being extorted rather than bribed that it is possible to reach a psychological understanding of how Trump was operating in the Ukraine matter. 27/31
It underscores how hateful and vicious Trump can be when he has power over anyone who threatens to stand in the way when he wants to advance his own personal interests and advantage. 28/31
For Trump, it wasn’t enough to negotiate a quid pro quo as an equal with Zelensky: he had to humiliate him and make him grovel, knowing that Zelensky and Ukraine desperately needed the two things Zelensky wanted in order to defend his country against Putin’s aggression. 29/31
As I put it in a thread on 23 Oct: 30/31
(For a discussion of the legal difference between extortion and bribery, see here. Lindgren argues that in the real world the distinction is hard to make, but conceptually they are clearly distinguishable — as in fact they are in l’affaire Ukraine.) 31/31 tinyurl.com/ycs6hwjf
