Do Political Players Project their own Negative Traits on their Opponents?
Accuse your opponents of what you yourself are doing… Adolf Hitler
Accusation
Donald Trump coerced Ukraine by threatening to withhold aid.
A political scandal arose in 2019 primarily from the discovery of U.S. president Donald Trump‘s attempts to coerce Ukraine into investigating his political rival Joe Biden and thus potentially damage Biden’s campaign for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination. Trump enlisted surrogates in and outside his administration, including personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr, to pressure Ukraine and other governments to cooperate in supporting and legitimizing the Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory and other conspiracy theories concerning U.S. politics.[1][2][3][4][5] Trump blocked payment of a congressionally-mandated $400 million military aid package, in an attempt to obtain quid pro quo cooperation from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Contacts were established between the White House and government of Ukraine, culminating in a call between Trump and Zelenskyy on July 25, 2019.[1][2][3][6]
Trump released the aid after becoming aware of a whistleblower complaint made in August 2019, before the complaint was known by Congress or the public.[7] The scandal reached public attention in mid-September 2019.[8] The complaint raised concerns about Trump using powers to solicit foreign electoral intervention in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.[9] The White House corroborated allegations raised by the whistleblower. A transcript of the Trump–Zelenskyy call confirmed Trump requested investigations into Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, as well as a conspiracy theory involving a Democratic National Committee server, while urging Zelenskyy to work with Giuliani and Barr on this.[10][11]
Former acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said one reason why Trump withheld aid to Ukraine was Ukrainian “corruption related to the DNC server”, referring to a debunked theory that Ukrainians framed Russia for hacking into the DNC system.[12] Trump has publicly urged Ukraine and China to investigate the Bidens.[13] The Trump administration’s top diplomat to Ukraine, Bill Taylor, testified he was told aid to Ukraine and a Trump–Zelenskyy White House meeting were conditional on Zelenskyy announcing investigations into the Bidens and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections.[14] U.S. ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland testified he worked with Giuliani at Trump’s “express direction” to arrange a quid pro quo with the Ukraine government.[15]
On September 24, 2019, the House of Representatives began a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump.[16] On October 31, 2019, the House of Representatives voted to approve guidelines for the next phase of impeachment.[17] Trump was impeached on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress,[18] but was acquitted by the Senate.[19]
On December 3, 2019, as part of the inquiry, the House Intelligence Committee published a report detailing that “President Trump, personally and acting through agents within and outside of the U.S. government, solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, to benefit his reelection. …President Trump conditioned official acts on a public announcement by the new Ukrainian president…of politically-motivated investigations, including one into Joe Biden, one of Trump’s domestic political opponents. In pressuring President Zelenskyy to carry out his demand, President Trump withheld a White House meeting desperately sought by the Ukrainian president, and critical U.S. military assistance to fight Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine.”[20]: 8 In January 2020, the Government Accountability Office, a non-partisan watchdog, concluded the White House broke federal law by withholding Congress-approved military aid to Ukraine.[21]
Above description quoted from Wikipedia, click to get more information.
Rebuttal
Joe Biden actually coerced Ukraine by threatening to withhold US aid unless they fired the prosecutor investigating the corruption of the company his son was on the board.
Joe Biden was given the role of overseeing Ukraine and China when vice president in the Obama administration, and his son Hunter soon became the recipient of millions of dollars from Ukraine, Russia, China, Romania, and Kazakhstan. Joe, never known for his discretion or strategic political acumen, was on video bragging that he told Ukrainian officials unless they fired their anti-corruption prosecutor who was investigating the energy company that was paying his son Hunter millions of dollars, he would withhold roughly $1 billion in foreign aid. See this video for reference: https://oversight.house.gov/timeline/ukraine-11/biden-firing-ukraine-prosecutor-clip/
Recent disclosure of public documents show there was no support from the US State Dept. for this action, it was completely Joe Biden.
Before this was used by the Trump campaign to discredit Joe by accusing him of being involved with the graft of his son and brother, democratic house representatives declared that a phone call between Trump and Zelensky showed “quid quo pro” by withholding foreign aid unless Ukraine followed through with corruption investigations. Adam Schiff, the democratic Chair of the Permanent House Select Committee on Intelligence, who touted his high security exclusive knowledge of the contents of the call claimed that the attempted coercion was unambiguous. House democrats impeached Trump because of this “scandal” even after the transcript of the call was released and it was apparent there was no coercion. The disruption of impeachment proceedings was a significant drain on the resources and attention of the Trump administration and effectively precluded any political traction his campaign would have gotten from disclosing the actual coercion by Biden that would have been seen by most observers as bribery.
The document on the left is an example of extensive bias through spin, slant, and deception (see this article on bias). The primary tool of deception is presenting statements made by opponents as facts. Another is referring to counter arguments as “conspiracy theories” without the follow up, sometimes years later, that proved them true. To get the other side of this story and identify the false accusations see these references:
Government Gangsters, Cash Patel (book and movie)
John Durham investigative report (link to the .pdf)
John Solomon report on Senator Charles Grassley’s investigation (link to the article)