On Tuesday, The Washington Post ripped Democrats for their apparent “double standard” regarding their party’s latest push to impeach President Donald Trump. The left-leaning paper said that Democrats who are incensed about Trump allegedly offering an alleged quid pro quo to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (and a released transcript from Wednesday morning indicates this was not the case) should look in the mirror.
“It got almost no attention, but in May, CNN reported that Sens. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Richard J. Durbin (D-IL) and Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT) wrote a letter to Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, expressing concern at the closing of four investigations they said were critical to the Mueller probe,” The Washington Post outlined. “In the letter, they implied that their support for U.S. assistance to Ukraine was at stake. Describing themselves as ‘strong advocates for a robust and close relationship with Ukraine,’ the Democratic senators declared, ‘We have supported [the] capacity-building process and are disappointed that some in Kyiv appear to have cast aside these [democratic] principles to avoid the ire of President Trump,’ before demanding Lutsenko ‘reverse course and halt any efforts to impede cooperation with this important investigation.’”
The Post asked: “So, it’s okay for Democratic senators to encourage Ukraine to investigate Trump, but it’s not okay for the president to allegedly encourage Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden?”
Moreover, a plain reading of the transcript from the July call from Trump to President Zelensky released on Wednesday showed that the president seemed to merely ask Zelensky for cooperation with the Department of Justice probe in 2016 election interference.
Here’s part of the transcript:
“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 … I guess you have one of your wealthy people … The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible.”
“Prior to the release of the transcript, media and other Democrats misrepresented the phone call as an abuse of office,” noted The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway. There was no quid pro quo, as suggested while pushing impeachment efforts. Hemingway added. “It is unclear how a United States president attempting to get to the bottom of foreign interference in democratic U.S. elections constitutes an abuse of power, as many Democrats have alleged in recent days.”
Related: Trump Releases Transcript Of Phone Call With Ukraine President, Justice Department Responds