Well, you are generally safe if you presume that Bug-eyed Schiff is lying.
One of the most effective summations in the House impeachment managers’ presentation to the Senate on Thursday was given by Representative Sylvia Garcia, a freshman Democrat from Texas who used to be the presiding judge in Houston’s municipal court system. She took direct aim at claims about suspected Biden self-dealing in Ukraine that have been advanced by President Trump and his defenders, particularly House Republicans and Rudy Giuliani, the president’s private lawyer.
The congresswoman was persuasive. Vice President Biden, we’re to believe, had no connection whatsoever to Hunter Biden’s gig at Burisma, the reputedly corrupt Ukrainian energy company on whose board he was lavishly paid to sit. When President Obama’s veep threatened to withhold $1 billion in funding from Ukraine unless the government in Kyiv fired chief prosecutor Viktor Shokin, it had nothing to do with whether Shokin was trying to investigate Burisma. Indeed, it was quite the opposite: Shokin, you see, was utterly without scruples, an obstacle to Western anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine. In squeezing Kyiv to remove him, the vice president was simply carrying out Obama-administration policy, which had the backing of our European Union allies and the International Monetary Fund.
Biden bragged about how he extorted the Ukrainians. Democrats maintain, is that he did nothing wrong. What’s more, they say everyone knows he did nothing wrong — including President Trump.
Therefore, the argument goes, when Trump asked President Zelensky for an investigation of the Bidens, it is inconceivable that Trump could actually have been concerned about rooting out corruption. The House impeachment managers scoff at the suggestion that Donald Trump has suddenly become the scourge of corruption in countries, such as Ukraine, that receive hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid. There can be no other explanation than that Trump was aiming to damage his likely rival in the 2020 campaign. What’s more, Trump had to have been asking Zelensky, in effect, to lie about Biden — to fabricate a corruption case — because everyone knew the Bidens had done nothing wrong.
There is nothing illegal about Trump encouraging a foreign government to investigate an American citizen for violations of foreign law. The fact that Hunter Biden was cashing in on his father’s political influence, and that Joe Biden had a neon-flashing conflict of interest when he took official action that could have benefited his son, does not necessarily mean the Bidens did anything illegal.
But, it is also entirely possible that the Bidens’ actions, whether or not provably illegal, were so objectively suspicious, so suggestive of corruption, that it was perfectly reasonable for Trump to believe that they should be investigated — and that they could have violated American law, as well as Ukrainian law.
Trump Impeachment Trial: Democrats’ Burisma Bait and Switch | National Review