Among the many, many lies told by Russian asset and sociopath Donald "Impeachable Me" Trump regarding his Ukraine shakedown scheme was that withholding the vital military aid to Ukraine was all about reported Ukrainian corruption, not about getting political dirt on the Bidens in exchange. Trump's repeatedly threatened the whistleblower who reported the corrupt conversation he had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
There is reporting that Trump was forced by knowledge of the whistleblower's complaint (which Trump's own Inspector General for the intelligence community deemed credible) to abruptly release the aid on September 11. Simply put, the whistleblower disrupted Trump's bribery and extortion plot, which explains his fury at the person. As Greg Sargent points out, this reporting shatters two of Trump's remaining, ludicrous defenses:
"First, it refutes the absurd notion that, because Trump ultimately released the aid, this somehow shows the plot to pressure Ukraine into announcing investigations to help his reelection was never corrupt. We now know Trump knew it had been exposed before the aid was halted.
In short: They got caught.
But this new revelation also undercuts the “I want nothing — no quid pro quo” defense as well. It sheds light on another key subplot: the manner in which Trump appears to have corruptly directed Sondland to convey the extortion demand to Ukraine, while preserving plausible deniability for doing so." (our emphasis)Knowing that the whistleblower -- and then Congress -- already had the goods on him, Trump self-consciously and disingenuously said he wanted "nothing", knowing that his man Sondland would recall that under oath. But who, especially Trump, would use "quid pro quo" in a conversation if he hadn't already been tipped that his bribery and extortion scheme was about to be exposed, and discussed the complaint with his White (Supremacist) House lawyers?
