James Campbell: Envoy William B. Taylor, Jr is Donald Trump’s nightmare
The envoy accusing Donald Trump of corruption has a reputation for integrity and shapes as a nightmare for the President, writes James Campbell.
James Campbell
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Unless something extraordinary emerges to discredit this week’s evidence from Washington, it is now a certainty that Donald Trump is going to be impeached.
You could argue that the fix was in last month when the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, announced a formal impeachment process; it was clear the Democrats were going to try to remove Trump, whatever the process turned up.
The chances of that actually resulting in Trump’s removal from office were remote, however. Sure, the Democratic controlled Congress might vote for impeachment, forcing the Senate to hold a trial. But the chances of two-thirds of Senators, mostly Republicans, voting to convict him were slight. Moreover, the evidence for the allegation that Trump threatened to withhold aid to Ukraine if its president didn’t launch a corruption probe into Joe Biden’s son wasn’t there.
Sure, Trump had asked President Volodymyr Zelensky to probe the son of the man most likely to face off against him next November but, as his supporters pointed out, the request wasn’t tied to aid.
But on Tuesday, William B. Taylor Jr, the man who is effectively the acting ambassador to Ukraine, presented himself at the Capitol building to throw some light on the situation.
Who is Taylor? Let’s run through some highlights from his CV: West Point; 82nd Airborne and 101st Airborne in Vietnam; Bronze Star and Air Medal V for heroism; worked with NATO under President Reagan; appointed ambassador to the Ukraine by George W. Bush. Yes, he was on the staff of a Democratic Senator for five years, which no doubt will be enough to discredit him in the eyes of Trump fans.
But you get the point: this bloke is going to be hard to paint as a Leftoid nutjob. Moreover, from all reports so far, his reputation for personal honesty appears to be pretty much universal — though no doubt, even now, hands are hard at work digging up material to try to discredit him.
Anyway, here’s what he had to say. First, there wasn’t just a quid pro quo for the military aid, although he says quite clearly there was. There was also a quid pro quo for a White House meeting between Trump and Zelensky. And it wasn’t just implied — the conditions were made explicit to the Ukrainians.
Taylor also alleged the White House went out of its way to not include most of the regular interagency participants in a call planned between Trump and Zelensky.
Some of his claims are just interesting, if not actually evidence of corruption. For instance, Taylor said it was his understanding that, at one point over the summer, when Ukraine‘s aid appeared to be blocked, “the Secretaries of Defence and State, the CIA Director and the National Security Advisor sought a joint meeting with the President to convince him to release the hold, but such a meeting was hard to schedule and the hold lasted well into September”.
If that is true, it’s a pretty strange state of affairs when the folks with those titles are unable to see the boss.
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Now, much of this is uncorroborated, though I suspect the operative words here are “so far”. But if Taylor is what he appears to be, then Trump is in all sorts of strife.
Holding a country’s military aid — aid it needs to defend itself against Russia, aid that had been mandated by Congress — until its president starts looking into your political opponents is almost certainly illegal. And certainly sleazy.
It might also have once counted as shocking but after less than three years, it is difficult to be shocked by the Trump administration.
Sensing their man is in strife, Trump’s media camp followers are already changing their lines. The “nothing to see here” defence having been quietly retired, a new argument goes like this: “Yes, Trump may be guilty of what he is alleged to have done here, which may well be illegal, hell, it may even constitute a high crime and misdemeanour as the Constitution requires, but look at the vibe of thing. If Trump is removed from office, his supporters just won’t accept it is legitimate. Do we really want half the American population believing that the deep state undid the last election?”
As an argument it has the merit of being expandable, that is to say you can keep using it no matter what else emerges. And I think we can bet plenty more will.
James Campbell is a Herald Sun columnist.