[detbuch]

Originally Posted by Pete F.

Abuse of power is cause for impeachment, as is obstruction.

Floridaman has told us repeatedly, he will seek and use information from foreign governments and agents to pervert our next presidential election to his personal, political, and financial benefit.

The facts—at least the broad outlines and necessary highlights—are already well known, so the question is not: What did the president say and when did he say it?

1) Sondland actually did directly tell a top Ukrainian official that military aid was conditioned, and did this after taking direction from Trump for months.

2) Many officials testified meeting was conditioned.

Those are smoking guns. The call itself is a smoking gun.

And there is a remedy............

An avaricious man, who might happen to fill the office, looking forward to … yield[ing] up the emoluments he enjoyed … might not scruple to have recourse to the most corrupt expedients.

An ambitious man, too, when … seated on the summit of his country’s honors, … would be … violently tempted to embrace a favorable conjuncture for attempting the prolongation of his power, at every personal hazard.

And it is moving forward, Floridaman has chosen to continually obstruct in every manner possible short of sending the troops to invade Congress, though he did send his stooges to storm the SCIF (which most of the members had failed to attend in any case) and conduct a sit-in or something, for the purported reason that they were not public.
When the meetings were public, he cried because he felt he had inadequate representation.
When they say OK you can have representation and can appear, he claims executive privilege without precedent.
The only claim to executive privilege during impeachment was made by Nixon and decided unanimously against the Presidency by the Supreme Court sixteen days before he resigned.

Presidents from Washington on down have acknowledged that executive privilege is inapplicable--or in any event outweighed by congressional need as a co-equal branch of government--in impeachment inquiries. Polk's 1846 statement is representative. He “cheerfully admitted” that with “a view to the exercise of [the impeachment] power,” the House “has the right to investigate the conduct of all public officers under the Government,” and its power “in the pursuit of this object would penetrate into the most secret recesses of the Executive Departments. It could command the attendance of any and every agent of the Government, and compel them to produce all papers, public or private, official or unofficial, & to testify on oath to all facts within their knowledge.” In such cases, said Polk, “all the archives and papers of the Executive Departments, public or private, would be subject to the inspection and control of a committee of [Congress] and every facility in the power of the Executive be afforded them to enable them to prosecute an investigation.”

That's a lot of dancing around the edges. In the meantime, in the center of it all, Zelensky said he didn't know of a quid pro quo, and that Trump did nothing wrong. It would have to be proved that he is lying.

The money was given.

Trump had a history of being concerned with Ukrainian corruption and that he wanted some assurance that the money wasn't going to be more money wasted on corruption.

Burisma was a part of the corruption. Unqualified Hunter Biden was possibly (probably in fact) hired for influence. The Prosecutor who was investigating Burisma was fired at the behest of Joe Biden and replaced by another prosecutor who had the same reputation of corruption as the fired one. And the investigation of Burisma was dropped. The hiring of Hunter Biden paid off.

The notion that Trump asked for the investigations into corruption to be reopened or to continue, including the hiring of Biden, strictly for personal gain is open to interpretation, opinion, assumption, but difficult to prove, even with circumstantial evidence. When circumstantial evidence can be interpreted in different ways it is not strong enough to prove guilt and not important enough to overcome direct evidence or other circumstantial evidence that contradict it.