House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on Monday released a four-page “fact sheet” outlining why Democrats believe President Trump abused his power, betrayed his oath of office, and should, therefore, be impeached.
Released by Pelosi’s office, the document titled, “Truth Exposed,” outlines the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky– a call that showed no quid pro quo, despite Democrats’ claim.
However, Pelosi’s document tells a drastically different story, maintaining the conversation painted a “damning picture of Trump abusing his office by pressing a foreign government to interfere in our 2020 elections.”
The document explicitly declares that Trump “betrayed his oath of office, betrayed our national security and betrayed the integrity of our elections for his own personal political gain.”
The document disingenuously attributes Trump’s mention of a “favor” directly to the president’s line about Joe Biden (D). According to the transcript, Trump said, “I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike.”
However, Biden was not mentioned until later in the conversation.
Of Biden, Trump said:
I just want to let you know that’s the other thing, There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you ·can look into it … It sounds horrible to me.
As Ann Coulter told Breitbart News Tonight last week, Trump’s query revolved around the corruption of a public official. It was not a call to interfere in the 2020 election.
“There is a statute that was arguably I think – it certainly looks more corrupt – violated by Joe Biden, using your office to benefit you, yourself personally, or a member of your family. I think we got that,” she said.
As Breitbart News reported:
“There is a statute that was arguably I think – it certainly looks more corrupt – violated by Joe Biden, using your office to benefit you, yourself personally, or a member of your family. I think we got that,” she said, adding that Trump’s query revolved around the corruption of a public official, something that “most Americans” are on board with.
“There is actually a crime for a public official to use the benefits of his office to benefit his family members or himself. That’s what it certainly looks like with Biden,” Coulter said, reminding the audience of the former vice president’s threat to withhold $1 billion in aid “until the president of Ukraine fired a prosecutor investigating a company that was paying Biden’s son multiple millions of dollars for mysterious reasons.”
“The Ukrainian prosecutor was looking at this before Trump said anything about it. It was Biden who got that prosecutor called off. So there was some reason to look into it,” Coulter pointed out.
The document continues, implicating Vice President Mike Pence in the so-called “scandal”:
According to press reports, in September, Pence met with Ukrainian President Zelensky in Poland and “conveyed the newsthat hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid to Ukraine was not going to be releasedamid concerns about the country’s lagging efforts to combat corruption. The withholding of aid may have been an effort to pressure Ukraine into announcing investigationsinto President Trump’s 2020 political rival to help the president’s reelection.
However, it was Biden who, as vice president, threatened to withhold aid to the country unless it caved to his political objectives. Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in aid unless Ukrainian officials fired a prosecutor investigating Burisma Holdings, where Hunter Biden was making tens of thousands of dollars per month. The elder Biden bragged about his ultimatum last year.
Biden said during an appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations last year:
I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.
“Well, son of a bitch,” Biden bragged. “He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”
The final page of the documents alleges that Trump engaged in a coverup, champions the “whistleblower” complaint, and claims that the transcript of the phone call “corroborates allegations made in the whistleblower complaint, in particular, that President Trump betrayed his oath of office by using the U.S. government and actors to advance his scheme to shake down the Ukrainian government to interfere in the 2020 elections.”
While the transcript of the phone call shows no such evidence of that, the document’s claim echos the fake conversation House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) performed during a committee hearing last month.
“This is the essence of what the president communicates,” Schiff stated during the hearing. He read out:
We’ve been very good to your country. Very good. No other country has done as much as we have. But you know what? I don’t see much reciprocity here. I hear what you want. I have a favor I want from YOU though. And I’m going to say this only seven times so you better listen good.
“I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent, understand? Lots of it,” he continued.
“This is in sum and character what the president was trying to communicate,” Schiff explained, failing to use quotes from the actual conversation and later admitting that his performance “was at least meant to be in part parody.”
The outline of Pelosi’s document parallels the talking points detailed in the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s (DCCC) memo summarizing its internal pollster’s findings on impeachment sentiments across the country. The memo encourages Democrats to drive the impeachment narrative home by claiming that Trump abused his power and put himself above the law. It also encourages Democrats to accuse anti-impeachment Republicans of “failing to fulfill their oath of office.”