Yes, Obama admin asked Ukraine to investigate Trump campaign, but what of it?

Yes, Obama admin asked Ukraine to investigate Trump campaign, but what of it?

As my colleague J.E. Dyer, notes in a must-read column this morning, the fish is now stinking from the head down. The timeline of the Democrats’ rush to judgment now raises all sorts of questions. Why, for example, did Adam Schiff sit on the whistleblower’s complaint for over a month (shades of Dianne Weinstein’s handling of the Blasey-Ford complaint)? And what prompted the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) sometime between May and August to loosen the key requirements for lodging a whistleblower complaint from within the intelligence community? (“First-hand information” is no longer a prerequisite for filing a complaint, which conveniently covers the current situation.)

Undaunted by these questions, Never Trumpers have pressed forward with other more pressing matters. National Review’s Jonah Goldberg asks in a morning headline “Trump did it, but should he be impeached?”

If the answer is yes, then Trump haters of all stripes have some questions of their own to answer. One is why there was never an outcry for impeachment when Barack Obama’s administration did precisely what Trump has been accused of, right down to the name of the foreign power.

Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?

As National Review’s Andrew McCarthy writes, “in 2015 … a new Ukrainian government more to the Obama administration’s liking … came to power. It was desperate for American help, financially and security-wise, which is why Vice President Biden was in a position to pressure it into firing the prosecutor who was conducting a corruption investigation of Burisma, the energy company that had appointed Hunter Biden to its board and was lavishly compensating him.”

In Ball of Collusion, I outline some of the extensive evidence that in 2016, the Obama administration’s law-enforcement agencies pressured their Ukrainian counterparts to revive a dormant corruption investigation of Paul Manafort. … [Emphasis added]

This isn’t just close to the crime Donald Trump is being charged with. It’s identical. So where were the urgent calls back then for Obama’s impeachment? Or the Democrats believe only in holding a president of an opposition party accountable for “high crimes and misdemeanors”?

Howard Portnoy

Howard Portnoy

Howard Portnoy has written for The Blaze, HotAir, NewsBusters, Weasel Zippers, Conservative Firing Line, RedCounty, and New York’s Daily News. He has one published novel, Hot Rain, (G. P. Putnam’s Sons), and has been a guest on Radio Vice Online with Jim Vicevich, The Alana Burke Show, Smart Life with Dr. Gina, and The George Espenlaub Show.

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