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Trump's best - really, his only - defense is that his desire to investigate Biden was not to take out a rival, but to combat corruption. Big problems with that defense:
1. He pushed Ukraine, not his own DOJ to investigate.
2. He worked through his private lawyer, Giuliani, rather than through his own White House counsel or the DOJ.
3. Giuliani himself was working with two people who are now under indictment, and who were themselves foreign individuals. Not great witnesses for the defense, at best.
4. He cut Bolton, his own NSA, out of the loop. Not consistent with pursuing a legitimate national interest.
5. He never attempted to enlist other countries or international law enforcement to help pursue the investigation, as a non-corrupt enforcer would do. The EU had long-standing desires to curtail Ukrainian corruption.
6. The witnesses Giuliani and Trump were putting forward for Ukraine to talk to were themselves the targets of corruption investigations.
7. Trump had just in May certified Ukraine as sufficiently non-corrupt to provide aid. That undermines his claim that he needed to withhold aid to get them to investigate corruption by Biden.
7a. Put differently, Trump didn't condition aid on Ukraine generally pursuing corruption, but just corruption by one person, who happens to be Biden. Yet numerous others (including Americans) are more likely to be corruption targets of an honest corruption initiative.
8. Trump did not withdraw the prior certification of Ukraine, nor did he alert anyone else, that Ukraine was backsliding generally on its commitment to fighting corruption.
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