political narrative. The facts, however, show outstanding questions about Ukrainian influence in the 2016 presidential election—questions that the Democrats' witnesses said would be appropriate for Ukraine to examine.
Prominent Democrats expressed concern about foreign interference in U.S. elections when they believed that the Russian government colluded with the Trump campaign in 2016. For example, in a 2017 hearing about Russian election interference, then-Ranking Member Schiff said that the "stakes are nothing less than the future of liberal democracy."[1] But where evidence suggests that Ukraine also sought to influence the election to the benefit of the Clinton campaign, now-Chairman Schiff and fellow Democrats have held their outrage.
Democrats have posited a false choice: that influence in the 2016 election is binary—it could have been conducted by Russia or by Ukraine, but not both. This is nonsense. Under then-Chairman Devin Nunes, Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee issued a report in March 2018 detailing Russia's active measures campaign against the United States.[2] But Russian interference in U.S. elections does not preclude Ukrainian officials from also attempting to influence the election. As Ambassador Volker testified during his public hearing, it is possible for more than one country to influence U.S. elections.[3]
Indisputable evidence shows that senior Ukrainian government officials sought to influence the 2016 election in favor of Secretary Clinton and against then-candidate Trump. In August 2016, then-Ukrainian Ambassador to the United States, Valeriy Chaly, wrote an op-ed in The Hill criticizing Trump's policies toward Ukraine.[4] The same month, the Financial Times reported that Trump's candidacy led "Kyiv's wider political leadership to do something they would never have attempted before: intervene, however indirectly, in a US election."[5] Ukrainian parliamentarian Serhiy Leshchenko explained that Ukraine was "on Hillary Clinton's side.[6] Other senior Ukrainian officials called candidate Trump a "clown," a "dangerous misfit," and "dangerous," and alleged that candidate Trump "challenged the very values of the free world."[7]
Other publicly available information reinforces the conclusion that senior Ukrainian government officials worked in 2016 to support Secretary Clinton. A January 2017 Politico article by current-New York Times reporter Ken Vogel detailed the Ukrainian effort to "sabotage" the Trump campaign.[8] Although Democrats reflexively dismiss the information presented in this article, neither Politico nor Vogel have retracted the story.
- ↑ Open hearing on Russian Active Measures Campaign: Hearing before the H. Perm. Sel. Comm. on Intelligence, 115th Cong. (2017)
- ↑ H. Perm. Sel. Comm. on Intelligence, Report on Russian Active Measures (Mar. 2018).
- ↑ Impeachment Inquiry: Ambassador Kurt Volker and Mr. Timothy Morrison, supra note 8
- ↑ See Chaly, supra note 27.
- ↑ Olearchyk, supra note 123.
- ↑ Id.
- ↑ Id.; Vogel & Stern, supra note 127.
- ↑ Vogel & Stern, supra note 127.
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