It is Biden, Not Trump, For Whom the US Engaged in a Quid Pro Quo with Ukraine

It does not take a deep dive into the facts to determine that the Democrats' partisan impeachment case is on very shaky ground.  Actually, looking at the facts objectively from what we know from the Ukrainian perspective seems to show that former Vice President Biden, not President Trump, is the one whose activities should be receiving further scrutiny.

According to Webster’s a quid pro quo is "something given or received for something else."  Democrats allege Trump wanted dirt on Biden in return for foreign aid.  However, according to the New York Times reporter Ken Vogel: “The Ukrainians weren't made aware that the assistance was being delayed/reviewed until more than one month after the call."

 

This literally means no quid pro quo.  Now compare this to Joe Biden's meeting with the Ukrainians in his own words:

And so I got Ukraine. And I remember going over, convincing our team, our leaders to—convincing that we should be providing for loan guarantees. And I went over, I guess, the 12th, 13th time to Kiev. And I was supposed to announce that there was another billion-dollar loan guarantee. And I had gotten a commitment from Poroshenko and from Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor. And they didn’t.

So they said they had—they were walking out to a press conference. I said, nah, I’m not going to—or, we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, you have no authority. You’re not the president. The president said—I said, call him.

(Laughter.)

I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. (Laughter.) He got fired.

That is a quid pro quo by definition.  Biden threatened the Ukrainians and in return they fired the prosecutor investigating his son.  This being a quid pro quo does not make it illegal.  Apparently, Obama Administration officials had been applying pressure to Ukraine for months. 

Putting aside the “legal” quid pro quo, there are some hard questions that as John Solomon over at The Hill wrote in April, long before the current scandal, that still need to be answered:

Nonetheless, some hard questions should be answered by Biden as he prepares, potentially, to run for president in 2020: Was it appropriate for your son and his firm to cash in on Ukraine while you served as point man for Ukraine policy? What work was performed for the money Hunter Biden’s firm received? Did you know about the Burisma probe? And when it was publicly announced that your son worked for Burisma, should you have recused yourself from leveraging a U.S. policy to pressure the prosecutor who very publicly pursued Burisma?

At a minimum the liberal media is guilty, as liberal bomb thrower Bill Maher said of a double standard in ignoring the situation with Biden and his son:

"The more I read about this- no, I don't think he was doing something terrible in Ukraine, but it's just- why can't politicians tell their f-----' kids, 'Get a job, get a godd--n job!''" Maher told the panel. "This kid was paid $600,000 because his name is Biden by a gas company in Ukraine, this super-corrupt country that just had a revolution to get rid of corruption. It just looks bad.' . . .

"It does sound like something Don Jr. would do," Maher said. "And if Don Jr. did it, it would be all Rachel Maddow was talking about."