Since Rudy Giuliani is busy getting ready for likely charges from the U.S. attorney’s office he once directed, acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney has taken over one of the most vital roles in the Trump White House—confessing to crimes on national television. Knocking the dust off the podium in the White House press room, Mulvaney confirmed that the crusty old layers of corruption are still there as he flat-out admitted that Donald Trump withheld military aid from Ukraine in order to generate an investigation.
Then, in a moment that you’d like to think came from a sick comedy, Mulvaney tried to make this okay by claiming that Trump wasn’t really asking for an investigation into Joe Biden. He was just asking Ukraine to engage in the pointless exercise of investigating Hillary Clinton. Asking the Ukrainians to indulge the conspiracy fantasy of Rudy Giuliani that Ukrainian officials were somehow connected to the theft of information from Democratic National Committee servers, that they were acting at the behest of Clinton, and that the investigation into how Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort got out of Ukraine with millions in illegal under-the-table cash was only begun to make trouble for Trump. And Trump also wants Ukraine to investigate the idea that a missing email server got up, swam the ocean, and settled down somewhere in Kyiv, carrying with it Clinton’s emails—even though there is no missing email server and never has been.
“Did he also mention to me in passing the corruption related to the D.N.C. server?” Mulvaney said in response to a question. “Absolutely. No question about that. But that’s it, and that’s why we held up the money.”
Repeating, that’s the acting Chief of Staff admitting that Trump’s previous claims that he held up the military aid over concerns that European nations weren’t paying a fair share was 100% BS. Admitting that it was held up on the basis of a conspiracy theory whose central purpose is absolving Russia of involvement in the 2016 election. That, says Mulvaney, is just peachy. And if you think it’s wrong to use foreign policy as a means of advancing a personal political agenda. “Get over it.” He said that. “Get over it.”
Even so, Mulvaney was still lying. Because Trump made it absolutely clear—clear to Gordon Sondland, clear to Kurt Volker, clear to William Taylor, and absolutely clear to every official in Ukraine—that investigating the ghosts of 2016 was not enough. Trump also demanded an investigation into Burisma, the company where Hunter Biden worked. The price of getting vitally required military aid wasn’t just agreeing to announce an investigation into Giuliani’s ridiculous, long-debunked, and genuinely disturbed fantasies; it was that plus an investigation meant to harm Joe Biden.
The real facts of the situation have already been made clear to Congress in testimony from Maria Yovanovitch, Kurt Volker, Fiona Hill, and Michael McKinley. They’re getting double underlined on Thursday by testimony from Ambassador Gordon Sondland who, as one of the point men in Trump’s scheme, was absolutely aware of what Trump was seeking in exchange for agreeing to step out of the way of the aid Congress had approved months before.
Mulvaney is just out there to plant the idea that, like paying off porn stars and obstructing justice, there’s nothing at all wrong with using extortion to get what Trump wants. And really, when there’s a need for a bug-eyed, screwball alternative to Rudy Giuliani to play the role of explaining how crime ain’t a crime … Mick Mulvaney will do.
