{"id":1315326,"date":"2019-10-05T22:28:01","date_gmt":"2019-10-06T04:28:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/parker-column-quids-and-quos-gone-wild\/"},"modified":"2019-10-05T22:28:01","modified_gmt":"2019-10-06T04:28:01","slug":"parker-column-quids-and-quos-gone-wild","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/parker-column-quids-and-quos-gone-wild\/","title":{"rendered":"Parker column: Quids and quos gone wild"},"content":{"rendered":"
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WASHINGTON \u2014 It\u2019s fair to say at this juncture that America\u2019s Quid and Ukraine\u2019s Quo have been caught in bed together.<\/p>\n

The fevered search for a damning quid pro quo since the White House released a readout of Donald Trump\u2019s July 25 telephone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky \u2014 in which Trump requested an investigation into Joe Biden and his son, Hunter \u2014 has proved productive.<\/p>\n

A series of text messages provided to Congress by former U.S. Special Envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker irrefutably shows a clear quid pro quo. Full stop. Contrary to White House assertions, the congressionally approved military aid that Trump was unilaterally withholding at the time (and an invitation to the White House) was being used as leverage for pushing Zelensky to conduct an investigation into the Bidens.<\/p>\n

In a 2018 speech before the Council on Foreign Relations, Biden recounted telling former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko in December 2015 that the U.S. would withhold a $1 billion loan guarantee if then-Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin wasn\u2019t removed from office. It was believed by both American and European officials at the time that anti-corruption efforts had become sluggish under Shokin.<\/p>\n

Said Biden: \u201cI looked at them and said, \u2018I\u2019m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you\u2019re not getting the money.\u2019 Well, son of a b\u2014\u2014. He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Biden\u2019s diplomatic triumph seemed to come at a propitious time for Burisma Holdings, a natural gas company for which Hunter Biden was serving as a board member. This potential conflict of interest is the basis for Trump\u2019s consuming obsession with the Bidens and Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Burisma had been under investigation, but for activities before Hunter Biden joined the company\u2019s board in 2014. Indeed, it was under Shokin that the investigation into the company stalled. In 2015, the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine decried Shokin\u2019s laggardly attention to corruption throughout the country, and Shokin\u2019s ouster was greeted by Western diplomats as a victory.<\/p>\n

Most, if not all, of what Trump thinks he knows about the Bidens and Ukraine has come from his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who reportedly has been all over the map, from Madrid to Warsaw to Paris, working back channels and coaxing Ukrainian prosecutors to investigate a conspiracy commensurate with the president\u2019s appetite for same.<\/p>\n

Giuliani\u2019s conclusion and, therefore, Trump\u2019s, is that the Bidens were in cahoots to issue $1 billion in loan guarantees in exchange for Shokin\u2019s firing, thus putting an end to the Burisma investigation. Judging from Washington Post interviews with some of these prosecutors \u2014 and with other Ukraine experts \u2014 it\u2019s possible that Giuliani was being fed information by Ukrainian officials that may or may not have been true as a means of currying favor with Giuliani (and by extension Trump), thereby enhancing their own political status within Ukraine\u2019s power structure.<\/p>\n

Such byzantine calculations remind us that quids and quos come in a wide variety of flavors and textures, some tastier than others.<\/p>\n

So far, no strong evidence has emerged that the Bidens did anything wrong, but the optics aren\u2019t pretty for Joe or his son. Perhaps Hunter was just a guy and who was naive (or proud) enough to believe that he was tapped for the Burisma board on his merits. Maybe he really believed that his father was then vice president of the United States and the point man for the Obama administration\u2019s Ukrainian policy \u2014 pushing for increased gas production while withholding monetary backing until Shokin was fired \u2014 had nothing to do with anything at all.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s at least as likely that Hunter was knowingly profiting from his father\u2019s position. He was paid as much as $50,000 a month to sit on the board of a company in an industry in which he had no experience. And he got the job just as his father was urging Ukraine to increase its gas production.<\/p>\n

Perception is everything in politics, columnists tend to say about now. Depending upon one\u2019s politics, Trump\u2019s leveraged \u201cfavor\u201d may not seem any worse than Biden\u2019s threat to withhold loan guarantees until another official was fired. But there is a difference. What Biden sought had international backing, and the loan guarantees were always tied to anti-corruption measures. What Trump did jeopardized our global diplomatic position and put Ukraine\u2019s future in peril \u2014 all for personal political advantage. Trump\u2019s abuse of power has invited criminal prosecution and impeachment.<\/p>\n

Couldn\u2019t happen to a nicer guy.<\/p>\n

Kathleen Parker\u2019s email address is kathleenparker@washpost.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 It\u2019s fair to say at this juncture that America\u2019s Quid and Ukraine\u2019s Quo have been caught in bed together. The fevered search for a damning quid pro quo since the White House released a readout of Donald Trump\u2019s July 25 telephone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky \u2014 in which Trump requested an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1315326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-06 20:36:52","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1315326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315326\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1315326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1315326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1315326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}