Silvanus said:
Pray explain how Burisma doesn't involve Hunter Biden.
Is the "Burisma" in those texts written in invisible ink? Because I can't see it. And having read the texts myself, I can tell you the first mention of Burisma doesn't come for weeks after those two. And I notice that rather than post the texts where the Trump administration apparently requests a statement be given, you summarized that part instead. Let me help you along:
First text exchange establishing public statement by Zelenskyy said:
Gordon Sonland: Morrison ready to get dates as soon as Yermak confirms.
Kurt Volker: Excellent!! How did you sway him?
G.S.: Not sure i did. I think potus really wants the deliverable
K.V.: But does he know that?
G.S.: Yep. Clearly lots of convos going on
K.V.: Ok - then that's good it's coming from two separate sources
G.S.: To avoid misunderstandings, might be helpful to ask Andrey for a draft statement (embargoed) so that we can see exactly what they propose to cover. Even though Ze does a live presser they can still summarize in a brief statement. Thoughts?
K.V.: Agree!
This is the first set of messages to talk about "Ze" (Zelenskyy) making a public statement before meeting with the president. It is clear from the context of other messages that the dates being proposed are for Zelenskyy meeting Trump at the White House. And while much less certain, I'm working under the assumption that "the deliverable" refers to either investigation or Zelenskyy's public statement announcing them. So there we have your suggestion that the press conference by Zelenskyy is being exchanged for a white house visit.
But notice, it's not Zelenskyy that they're trying to convince. Morrison, Trump's advisor on Russia and Ukraine, was ready to get dates, and Volker asks "how did you sway him?" Response: "Not sure I did." What does this tell us? It tells us the proposal didn't start with Trump. It was presented to Trump and he accepted. So, again assuming Trump wants this press conference, it's possible Trump and his administration said "hey, make a public statement that you're investigation 2016 election meddling", and Ukraine said "only if we can visit the White House", and Trump went "yeah, sure. Cool." Another possibility, Ukraine just proposed the whole thing at once "we'll give a press conference you like if we get to visit the White House", and Trump went "yeah, sure. cool." What we can logically deduce
DIDN'T happen is Ukraine asking to visit and Trump withholding that visit unless they made a public statement first. How can we deduce that? Because if Trump was the one playing hardball, the final approval would be coming from the Ukrainian side, and wouldn't involve someone thinking Trump really wants it.
Moving along to the exchange where Ukraine insists on confirming the date of the visit:
Supposed smoking gun said:
Andrey Yermak: Hi Kurt. Please let me know when you can talk. I think it's possible to make this declaration and mention all these things. Which we discussed yesterday. But it will be logic to do after we receive a confirmation of date. We inform about date of visit and about our expectations and our guarantees for future visit. Let discuss it.
Kurt Volker: Ok! It's late for you - why don't we talk in my morning, your afternoon? Say 10am/5pm? I agree with your approach. Let's iron out statement and use that to get a date and then PreZ can go forward with it?
A.Y,: Ok
K.V.: Great. Gordon is available to join as well
A.Y.: Excellent. Once we have a date, will call for a press briefing, announcing upcoming visit and outlining vision for the reboot of US-UKRAINE relationship, including among other things Burisma and election meddling in investigation.
K.V.: Sounds great!
This is supposed to be the bombshell. Personally, I think this is just figuring out logistics, deciding a visit date before the press conference so that you can announce the visit at the conference, that's logistics. But forgetting my opinion for the moment and reading this in the worst possible sense, we have Yermak, Ukrainian aide to Zelenskyy, refusing to arrange for the press conference until the date for the White House visit has been confirmed. And the US diplomatic response is "Ok!... I agree... Sounds Great!" So again, the instigating side is Ukraine. They're like "hey, we can do this thing, but do this thing for us" and the US agrees.
And just like in the record of the phone call, it's the Ukrainian side of the conversation that brings up anything relating to Biden first. Yernak is the one roping in Burisma. When all we had was the phone call, I was being told that maybe it was Zelenskyy bringing that up in that exchange, but obviously they were pressuring him to do that behind the scenes. Well this is behind the scenes. Not just is this behind the scenes, this is released by Democrats explicitly moving for impeachment, with a statement saying
Earlier today, selected portions of these texts were leaked to the press out of context. In order to correct the public record, we are now providing an attachment with more complete excerpts from the exchanges. The additional excerpts we are providing are still only a subset of the full body of the materials, which we hope to make public after review for personally identifiable information.
Our investigation will continue in the coming days. But we hope every Member of the House will join us in condemning in the strongest terms the President's now open defiance of our core values as American citizens to guard foreign interference in our democratic process.
So don't expect more to show up and make it worse, this list of texts was selected for release by those condemning Trump. It's not going to look worse than this. And we still have situations where the Ukrainian side is instigating.
Timeline including these texts:
1)We have had a report [https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/463307-solomon-these-once-secret-memos-cast-doubt-on-joe-bidens-ukraine-story] claim that Ukrainian officials were trying to get information about Burisma to the state department for the last year. The same report claimed that they were contacting Giuliani about it, not the other way around.
2)Before any of these text messages, Trump suspends military aid to Ukraine, and none of these texts acknowledge it until after the meeting's been arranged.
2)In these texts [https://www.scribd.com/document/428684382/Letter-Attachment-List#fullscreen&from_embed], we see a US envoy to Ukraine arrange a meeting between Giuliani and Yermak without indication of who asked for the introduction, but Giuliani and the State Department have said Yermak was the one who requested it [https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/kurt-volker-trump-s-part-time-ukraine-envoy-played-role-n1058871]. Then we have texts between US officials, talking about a calls involving Trump, Giuliani, and Yermak, saying his breakfast with Rudy (whcih seems to have been requested by Yermak) must have helped.
3)Next in these texts, We have one us official warn another that Ukraine doesn't want to look like a tool of the US, and the response is "Absolutely, but we need to get the conversation started regardless of the pretext." This is someone who, by my understanding, was trying to get a conversation started with the President on behalf of the Ukrainians. That is a huge statement. That says he was willing to act under the pretext the Ukrainians are trying to help Trump in order to get Trump to talk to them. This isn't Trump pressuring them, this is being offered to him.
4)Texts show an exchange where everyone involved is pushing up the line to try and get Trump in for the phone call. They say Morrison is pushing for the call, but feel free to tell Bolton that Rudy agrees to it.
Trump did not instigate this.
5)Texts before the phone call indicate the call will go well if Zelenskyy agrees to investigate 2016 election meddling. This implies that when Trump agreed to the phone call, he made comment about 2016 election meddling.
6)The phone call [https://www.scribd.com/document/427409665/Ukraine-Call-Transcript#from_embed] happens, and Trump asks for an investigation into the 2016 election. Mind you, we now know he's been asking this of basically any head of state he talks to on behalf of the Attorney General. Zelenskyy brings up the meeting between Yermak and Giuliani, which Yermak had requested, which inspires Trump to talk about Biden, implying Yermak contacted Giuliani at least in part to talk about Biden.
7)The White House is "swayed" into agreeing to the Ukrainian's visit to the White House, presumably by the offer of a press statement announcing investigations in Ukraine.
8)Volker speaks with Yermak, Yermak mention Zelenskyy making a statement to him. Then Volker asks Giuliani for another call with Yermak to advise him on the statement. The next day, Yermak requests a confirmed date for the White House visit so that they can announce the visit in the same press conference. Again, Yermak is instigating these events.
9)A bunch of correspondence goes back and forth on what the public statement should be.
10) Yermak contacts Volker with a Politico story about Trump suspending military aid to Ukraine and says "we need to talk". This implies that Yermak, aide to the President of Ukraine who arranged for the call and visit between Trump and Zelenskyy, didn't know about the suspending aid money until this news story, August 29th. And then Trump's trip to meet with Zelensky gets cancelled.
If you can look at that series of events and think that Trump was pressuring Ukraine, your eyes are just closed. It isn't just "well, they didn't mention military aid and Zelenskyy brought Biden up first" anymore. We know more now. And every piece of real evidence we have indicates that the Ukrainians didn't know about the aid until way after the phone call, and every step of the phone call and White House visit arrangements was started by Ukraine and asked of Trump. Pretend I'm wrong all you want, this is truth.
