B. The evidence does not establish that President Trump withheld a meeting with President Zelensky to pressure Ukraine to investigate the President's political rival for the purpose of benefiting him in the 2020 election.
Democrats allege that President Trump withheld a meeting with President Zelensky as a way of pressuring Ukraine to investigate President Trump's political rival.[1] Here, too, the evidence obtained during the impeachment inquiry does not support this allegation. President Trump and President Zelensky met without Ukraine ever investigating Vice Present Biden or his son, Hunter Biden.
The evidence strongly suggests, instead, that President Trump was reluctant to meet with President Zelensky for a different reason—Ukraine's long history of pervasive corruption and uncertainty about whether President Zelensky would break from this history and live up to his anti-corruption campaign platform. The Democrats' witnesses described how President Trump has a deep-seated and genuine skepticism of Ukraine due to its corruption and that the President's view was reasonable. Because of President Trump's skepticism and because President Zelensky was a first-time candidate with relatively untested views, Ukraine and U.S. officials sought to convince President Trump that President Zelensky was the "real deal" on reform. President Trump ultimately signed a letter to President Zelensky on May 29 inviting him to the White House.
Although there were several months between President Trump's invitation on May 29 and the bilateral meeting on September 25, the evidence does not show the delay was intentional or aimed at pressuring President Zelensky. The Democrats' witnesses described the difficulty in scheduling high-level meetings and how an anticipated presidential meeting in Poland in early September was cancelled due to Hurricane Dorian. Nonetheless, U.S. foreign policy officials believed that the Ukrainian government felt good about its relationship with the Trump Administration because of several high-level bilateral meetings held between May and September 2019, including President Zelensky's meeting with Vice President Pence on September 1. Ultimately, of course, President Trump and President Zelensky met during the U.N. General Assembly in New York on September 25, without Ukraine taking steps to investigate President Trump's political rival.
1. Ukraine has a long history of pervasive corruption.
Since it became an independent nation following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine has been plagued by systemic corruption. The Guardian has called Ukraine "the most corrupt nation in Europe"[2] and Ernst & Young cites Ukraine among the three most-corrupt nations of the world.[3]
- ↑ See, e.g., Karoun Demirjian et al., Officials' texts reveals belief that Trump wanted probes as condition of Ukraine meeting, Wash. Post, Oct. 4, 2019.
- ↑ Oliver Bullough, Welcome to Ukraine, the Most Corrupt Nation in Europe, Guardian, (Feb. 6, 2015).
- ↑ See, e.g., 14th Global Fraud Survey, Ernst & Young, (2016), https://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/EYcorporate-misconduct-individual-consequences/$FILE/EY-corporate-misconduct-individual-consequences.pdf (noting that 88% of Ukrainian's agree that "bribery/corrupt practices happen widely in business in [Ukraine]"). See also Viktor Tkachuk, People First: The Latest in the Watch on Ukrainian Democracy, Kyiv Post, (Sept. 11, 2012),
14
