Foreign Interference in National Elections?

"[The purpose of the inquiry is to establish whether Mr Trump] abused his power and invited foreign interference in our elections."
"If this is not impeachable conduct, what is?"
"[I will] do everything necessary to protect the whistleblower's identity."
"The questions presented by this impeachment inquiry are whether President Trump sought to exploit that ally's vulnerability and invite Ukraine's interference in our elections."
Congressman Adam Schiff, Democratic Chairman of the Intelligence Committee

"What's going on now is the single greatest scam in the history of American politics."
"The Democrats want to take away your guns, they want to take away  your health care, they want to take away your vote, they want to take away  your freedom, they want to take away your judges."
"They want to take away everything. ... And I'll never let that happen."
U.S. President Donald J. Trump

 

William Taylor, acting ambassador to Ukraine, one of two American career diplomats both of whom claim to be politically impartial, disclosed during the impeachment hearing focusing on President Donald Trump, now underway in Washington that the Republican president had an intense interest in having the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky agree to launch a secretive investigation into former vice-president Joe Biden's son's business activities in Ukraine. That investigation's conclusion of proven corruption would ostensibly release $391 million in defence support from the U.S. to Ukraine, a badly needed infusion for a nation struggling to assert its sovereignty against a Kremlin-designed expropriation of east Ukraine's Crimea and an ongoing conflict fuelled by Moscow and led by ethnic Russian Ukrainian rebels..

Mr. Taylor spoke of questioning the U.S.ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, about President Trump's interests in the investigation he was eager to see in action."Ambassador Sondland responded that President Trump cares more about the investigations of Biden, which (Rudolf) Giuliani (the president's personal lawyer) was pressing for" than for Ukraine, testified Mr. Taylor. He also stated that a member of his staff overheard a call between Gordon Sondland and President Trump where the president was informed that the Ukrainians were prepared to proceed with his request.

Nothing quite like the Byzantine behind-the-scenes machinations of the diplomatic circuit, the appointed elite in diplomatic officialdom believing themselves to be insiders, ready and anxious to trade insider information to enhance their reputations and bring a sheen of prestige to themselves. Millions of Americans, both supporters of the Democrats and Republicans are no doubt glued to news sources in this latest drama swirling around the most controversial president ever elected by Americans in a country more divided than ever before. Second-hand narratives and interpretations to impeach a sitting president. As though such underhanded negotiations have never before taken place, undetected.

"It's nothing more than an impeachment process in search of a crime", noted senior Republican Devin Nunes, accusing the Democrats of conducting a "carefully orchestrated smear campaign" with the use of "a horrifically one-sided process", accusing "Democrats, the corrupt media and partisan bureaucrats" of attempting to overturn the results of the 2016 election that brought Donald Trump so unexpectedly to the presidency. The Democrats led a toxic and vocal campaign post-election to prove that Russian interference in the election that brought Mr. Trump to power had taken place, to discredit the Democratic candidate in favour of a Republican victory.

There are echoes here of a recent general election in Canada, last month, in a country as regionally divided as the U.S. appears to be, where a considerable population in Canada's Western provinces in support of the Conservative opposition hoped to effect a change in government, removing the Liberals led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau from continuing to lead the country. In his four years of office Justin Trudeau has succeeded in alienating Western Canada to the point of threats of separatism. The Liberal government, fixated on Central Canada and particularly the province of Quebec, has sundered provincial relations through favouritism and a green agenda.

The many instances of incompetence and sheer, rank stupidity instanced by the government through the Liberal leader and prime minister has had a deleterious economic impact on the country overall, radically reducing investment and raising unemployment in the West, and the various scandals of illegal and contemptible skulduggery indulged by the prime minister and his colleagues is hardly representative of good governance. In the end, though much of Canada's voting population hoped to defeat the Liberal government, it managed to squeak back with a minority governing vote from its overwhelming majority status.

And one of the signal last-minute interventions that appeared to have swung the vote toward Justin Trudeau and away from his Conservative rival Andrew Scheer came courtesy of the deliberate interference of a foreign politician, no longer president of the United States, but whose popularity in Canada remains. A shift in momentum as election day loomed, back toward Trudeau despite the revelations of his glee in dressing in blackface to top the SNC-Lavalin and Vice-Admiral Mark Norman debacles, not to mention the glittering East Indian costumes and illegal gifts from lobbying sources, turned the election in Trudeau's favour.

ABC News  go.com

Trudeau campaign organizers, according to an insider, awaited the fruition of a "general agreement" reached between Trudeau and Barack Obama of an offer of election support: "but you never know until you see the text". And then it came through: "It was meant to come in the morning, but it didn't arrive until noon", explained the Liberal campaign strategist. "People felt really good. there was a genuine sense of concern and sadness, a weird heaviness to that point. But the Obama thing was a taste of that hopeful thing. If we felt it, so did the public. And what we did is we ran with it."

"It recharged the base -- those people who had been embarrassed by Trudeau's behaviour (in the 'blackface' scandal). Obama gave everyone the reassurance that Justin was a great guy and not a racist", recounted one campaign staff member. That intervention by former President Barack Obama was seen as a pivotal event, for if someone like Obama was supportive, people began to feel more assured about voting for Trudeau. Obama's endorsement paved the way for a Trudeau re-election, even if he was rewarded with a minority government to saddle Canada with the same governing failure it had hoped to escape from, when 'undecided' voters to that point suddenly decided.

ABC News go.com