We Are in Uncharted Territory

Almost everything about President Trump’s conversation with Ukraine’s president violated protocol.

President Trump, his Republican sycophants in Congress, and the right-wing media are working overtime yet again to distract and manipulate the American public. To downplay Mr. Trump’s transgressions, they are drawing a false equivalence between his July phone call with President Zelensky of Ukraine and former Vice President Biden’s efforts in 2015 to encourage the replacement of the Ukrainian prosecutor general.

Don’t be confused. These two cases have almost nothing in common. While I was President Obama’s national security adviser, Mr. Biden took repeated steps — at the president’s behest — to advance a widely supported, completely overt United States government policy to encourage Ukrainian officials to aggressively combat endemic corruption and bolster Ukraine’s nascent democracy.

Mr. Biden’s pressure on President Petro Poroshenko to remove his poor-performing prosecutor general, including by threatening to withhold additional aid, was fully consistent with American interests. It was also a policy fully supported by the International Monetary Fund and our European partners, who along with the United States were providing billions in economic assistance to support the newly elected Ukrainian government.

This broadly backed anti-corruption policy had nothing to do with Mr. Biden, his son Hunter, or any other individual. Moreover, the policy was conducted transparently and openly for all to see. As has been widely reported, the prosecutor general also was not pursuing any inquiry of Hunter Biden or the owner of the company whose board he sat on, Burisma, at the time of the vice president’s intervention. Indeed, by pressing for the removal of the corrupt prosecutor general, Mr. Biden backed a policy that increased the likelihood that a responsible replacement might pursue Burisma’s owner and others.

By contrast, President Trump conducted absolutely no government business when he spoke for thirty minutes with Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky. Instead, Mr. Trump solicited foreign interference in the 2020 election to advance his own political interests. Mr. Trump clearly pressured Mr. Zelensky to investigate Mr. Biden, the president’s most formidable and likely political opponent, as well as his son. By withholding almost $400 million in urgently needed military assistance appropriated by Congress for Ukraine, which is still combating the occupation of its eastern territory by Russia, and using it to extort Mr. Zelensky’s cooperation, Mr. Trump again put his personal interests above our national security.