In his closed-door testimony before the House that was strategically leaked to the press, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor alleged that President Donald Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to publicly announce his intent to open two investigations — the first into Ukraine’s alleged involvement in the 2016 election and the second into Burisma, the Ukrainian energy giant for which Hunter Biden had been a board member. This “explosive” testimony has Democrats and much of the mainstream media triumphantly declaring that they have finally found evidence of the smoking gun.

However, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) hit the brakes on the Democrats’ impeachment train. “In 90 seconds,” he said, “we had [Rep.] John Ratcliffe destroy Taylor’s whole argument.” He then pivoted to highlight the fact that this not-yet-voted-on impeachment inquiry is still nothing more than a Democrat-orchestrated show trial. It’s a trial in which a dishonest “Adam Schiff won’t let us talk about what happened,” McCarthy noted, though he added, “There is no quid pro quo.”

Until Democrats actually vote on impeachment and hold public hearings, this whole affair is nothing more than political theater designed to damage Trump’s reelection bid and, if possible, see him removed from office. This is the Democrats’ impeachment 2.0 strategy. After the tale of Russian collusion blew up in their faces following the failure of Robert Mueller’s investigation to pin an impeachable offense on Trump, Democrats opted for Ukraine-gate.

Democrats, supported by their Leftmedia cohorts, declared Trump guilty of engaging in an impeachable quid pro quo based upon a dubiously produced “whistleblower” complaint. But the complaint’s primary allegation that Trump pressured Ukraine into digging up dirt on his political rivals was proven wrong by the transcript of the phone call. No matter — Democrats and the Leftmedia insisted that there was reason to initiate an impeachment inquiry, which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced but while unilaterally breaking with past precedent to hold a vote to initiate such a serious decision. Pelosi did that to prevent Republicans from interfering in the charade and to make sure that Democrats controlled the narrative. To that end, Pelosi and company have ridiculously asserted that in order to get the “truth” of what happened, everything must be done in secret. Thus, the American public is left dependent upon learning of the progress of the “impeachment inquiry” via the mouths of Democrats. And we’re to believe this is a serious investigation.

Meanwhile, back to Trump and Ukraine. It does appear that Trump was engaged in seeking to find out who was behind the collusion hoax, a problem that clearly had ties to the U.S. intelligence community. Trump obviously doesn’t trust the intel community, and who could blame him? So while on the one hand the State Department was officially engaged in investigating corruption related to the 2016 election, it also appears that Trump tapped his trusted personal attorney Rudy Giuliani to spearhead a second investigation somewhat independent of the State Department. And given Giuliani’s reputation, it is entirely possible that he pressured Ukraine to investigate.

Trump wants to get those who were responsible for unleashing the whole Russia-collusion hoax. It also seems clear that he fears both the intelligence community and the State Department are still full of members of the deep-state cabal who are out to get him. And the Ukraine “whistleblower” complaint only serves to further support Trump’s suspicions.

Finally, there’s the question of motive. Why would Trump care about Biden if there wasn’t the obvious suspicion of potential corruption related to Biden’s own quid pro quo in 2016 in shutting down the investigation into Burisma? If Biden had not been involved in any significant manner with Ukraine, then Democrats might have an argument. But the fact is Biden was involved, and Trump has every right to find out if Biden’s actions were tainted.

(Edited.)

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Correction: Biden’s Ukrainian quid pro quo occurred in May of 2016, not in 2015 as the article previously stated.