An oft-repeated talking point about Donald Trump's shakedown of Ukraine is that it wasn't really a quid pro quo because Ukraine had no idea that aid was being withheld. Because obviously it is easy to overlook $391 million not showing up in your defense account. Right?
Here's the problem. Ukraine knew back in July.
But this guest was on Fox News, aka State Sponsored Propaganda, so they can just pretend like this isn't true.
Here is was Rivkin said:
RIVKIN: It was good day for the President's legal team, they focused in a much better way much better than rhetorical presentation by the House managers. They punched a lot of holes, basically the entire theory is corrupt motive, which is by the way incoherent as a matter of law. All we have are presumptions, assumptions and suppositions, absolutely no evidence that the President had a corrupt motive, absolutely no evidence that the President did not do what he actually said he did, talk to Ukrainian leader, talk with burden sharing, meaning the Europeans, surprise, surprise, not doing enough to help Ukraine and asked them to look in past corruption believeing quite correctly that Ukraine is quite corrupt.
HOST: Did they punch holes in narratives in terms of whether there was a quid pro quo and the President actually extorted or demanded actions by the Ukrainians?
RIVKIN: Absolutely. No evidence to suggest that Ukraiians were aware of the hold up in aid until it was publicized. No evidence that he pushed for it, lots of suppositions, the smart lawyers, cherry pick evidence a little.
The key point: Ukraine, he alleges, did not know until it was publicized. WHICH WAS IN THE MEDIA. And Ukraine knew before. Only after the reports came out around September 9th was Trump literally forced to release the aid on September 11th. Were it not for the whistleblower and the media investigating this, it is likely that Trump may have gotten his wish in forcing Zelensky to attend the CNN Interview that was scheduled, where it likely he would have announced the sham investigations into Hunter Biden and Burisma.
But even before the reports, it is clear from reporting from Ukraine government officials that *they already knew* about the aid being withheld. So what is Rivkin saying? LIES. All lies.
