Donald Trump's Assault on Campaign Finance Law

Donald Trump's assault on campaign finance law started with the June 9, 2016 meeting in the Trump Tower, which didn't come to light until notice of it came in one of the many revisions that Jared Kushner made on his national security form, picked up by The New York Times. Trump went through a series of ever increasing attempts to tone down the seriousness of a meeting originally pitched to Donald Trump Jr as the Russian government offering "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. Trump, senior,  finally got to the point where he said that "everyone" would have taken that call. He described it as "opo" (opposition) "research."

The next major point in Trump commenting on campaign finance law came in an Oval Office interview of President Trump by George Stephanopoulos, who asked it the president would accept a call from a foreign government with derogatory information on a political rival. Trump said that he would decide whether or not to report the call to the FBI or some other governmental agency. Knowing what we do about Donald Trump, it is very likely that if what he hears is very damaging to a rival, that it not the type of call that Trump will report.

What's  different about President Trump's July 25 call to the Ukrainian president is that he is soliciting the head of a foreign government to break U.S. campaign finance law. Once more, according the whistleblower's report, Trump continued to bring up the subject during the call.

Getting now to Trump's supporters' attempts to discredit the whistleblower, one of the main talking points is that the report is a second-hand, not a first-hand account of the call. The inspector general for the intelligence community has been prompted to issue a lengthy memo explaining that the whistleblower protection law does not require that a report must be first-hand: it must be credible. The whistleblower in this case was serving in an inter-agency capacity, and was getting reports from those with first-hand information. Of great importance is that the  whistleblower's report tracks very closely with the call transcript released by the Trump administration. In that transcript, the Ukrainian president is asked to open an investigation of corruption on the part of Joe Biden to, presumably, kill an investigation of his son, Hunter, who was serving on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.

The attorney for the first whistleblower is now representing a second whistleblower, who, he says, does have first-hand information, thereby shooting down the Trump surrogates' vain attempt to discredit the first whistleblower.

When the Trump administration released a sketchy transcript of a 30-minute call, President Trump apparently believed that the suspension of military aid was not specifically mentioned meant that there was no quid pro quo. This kind of linkage could have been revealed to the Ukrainian government either by Rudy Guiliani or through other means. Regarding the suspension of military aid, Trump has given two very different reasons for doing it: 1.) He was concerned about the corruption in the Ukrainian government, and didn't want to give military aid until the corruption problem was addressed; and 2.) He was waiting to see what other governments, such as Germany and France, would contribute in military aid.

ADDENDUMS:
*On September 30, Trump called for Adam Schiff to be arrested for treason for exaggerating parts of the President's call with Ukraine's leader.
*Trump denounced six members of Congress as "Do Nothing Democrat Savages," included were three women of color.
*As many as 130 officials have been questioned in a renewed probe of Hillary Clinton's emails.
*Attorney General William Barr has urged foreign governments to aid in his investigation of CIA and FBI activities related to the 2016 election.
*The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) allowed drug makers to increase production of opioids even as overdose deaths were skyrocketing. Opioid overdose deaths increased by 71 percent per year between 2013 and 2017, as the DEA authorized manufacturers to produce "substantially larger amounts of opioids," reads the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General.
*When on ABC's "This Week,"  host Martha Raddatz asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo what he knew about Trump's phone conversation with Ukrainian President Zelensky, Pompeo answered: "None of which I've seen." Pompeo referred to Ukraine's foreign minister saying that there was no pressure. Pompeo also said that Biden should  be investigated. It took about a week for Pompeo to admit that he was on the call.