Donald Trump doesn’t easily forgive or forget.
As Trump’s Republican allies in the United States Congress block military aid that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Kyiv desperately needs to avoid defeat in its war with invading Russian forces, it’s clear the former U.S. president’s ill will toward Ukraine has deep roots.
It was, after all, a phone call with Zelenskyy that led to Trump’s first impeachment in December 2019, after he was accused of seeking to influence the 2020 election by leaning on the Ukrainian leader to investigate current President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
It was, after all, a phone call with Zelenskyy that led to Trump’s first impeachment in December 2019, after he was accused of seeking to influence the 2020 election by leaning on the Ukrainian leader to investigate current President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
“It was impossible to prove the authenticity of the signature next to Manafort’s name in the ledger,” said Yuriy Lutsenko, a former prosecutor general who for a time supported Trump’s efforts to open a corruption investigation into Hunter Biden.
Trump’s July 2019 phone call with Zelenskyy would play a central role in one of the most embarrassing episodes in his political career: his first impeachment, which stemmed from his effort to pressure Ukraine’s president to open an investigation into Biden.
The catalyst was a video in which then-Vice President Joe Biden described how in 2016 he had threatened to withhold funds from Ukraine’s then-President Petro Poroshenko if Kyiv didn’t fire a prosecutor.
While Biden did seek Shokin’s removal, it was as part of a coordinated effort with the U.S. State Department and the European Union over concerns the prosecutor was blocking corruption investigations in the country.
“I don’t believe anybody who represents the party of Ronald Reagan will abandon Ukraine,” Andriy Yermak, the head of Zelenskyy’s office, told POLITICO earlier this month.
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