Let’s Understand What the “Deliverable” Really WasEditors’ Blog – Talking Points Memo / by Josh Marshall

Let’s Understand What the “Deliverable” Really Was

Editors’ Blog – Talking Points Memo / by Josh Marshall / 50min

One of the in-process leaks from today’s closed door testimony on Capitol Hill is that Bill Taylor, acting Ambassador to Ukraine, said that military aid shipments were made contingent on a public declaration to investigate the Bidens and 2016 election conspiracy theories. This was pretty clearly discussed and confirmed in those text messages which ex-envoy Kurt Volker turned over to Congress earlier this month. (Impeachment investigators later released them to the public). But there’s a key wrinkle of this part of the story that is important to absorb.

We hear a lot about “investigations”, “digging up dirt”, “manufacturing dirt”, etc. Indeed, the initial press reports on those Volker text messages had it that Sondland and Volker were trying to lock President Zelensky in to investigating with a public statement. In their view, the Ukrainians kept promising or making it seem like they’d work with Rudy on his sham investigation but didn’t follow through.

This makes clear that’s not exactly what was happening.

The public declaration wasn’t just a way to get the Ukrainians to commit themselves. It was actually the “deliverable” in itself.

Remember, there’s really no there there in the whole Rudy/Biden thicket of conspiracy theories. Yes, Hunter Biden was a privileged son and he clearly got work to a significant extent because of his name. But there were no shakedowns or threats or firings or investigations or really anything. There’s no there there. So even an aggressive effort to manufacture damaging information could only be so successful. Really though that wasn’t necessary. Having the government, indeed the President of Ukraine himself, make a high profile declaration that the accusations were legitimate, that crimes were probable and that the government was launching an investigation would probably have been more than enough to fatally wound Biden’s candidacy. It certainly would have been more than enough to get pretty much the entire political press in the US to see it as a live and legitimate issue. Whether there was ever any proof of anything, whether there was even any kind of actual investigation barely matters. That was enough. Those Volker texts alone show that was the real issue. Taylor just provides more granular detail.

Let’s also remember that it wasn’t just the Bidens. It was also probes into conspiracy theories about Ukraine and the DNC framing Russia for election interference as well as Paul Manafort. Again, as nonsensical as that was, that public declaration would be more than enough to radically shift the nature of the political debate in the US. How can you really be so sure Ukraine didn’t play some unknown role in the 2016 election or frame Russia and Trump if they’re basically saying they think they might have?

The public declaration was if not the whole enchilada, a good 90% of the enchilada. And they almost got it.