Trump’s first response, after a whistleblower in the National Security Council raised the alarm that the president had held up military aid to Ukraine while demanding Kyiv investigate his political rivals, was simple: It never happened.
Even he could see that whopper wouldn’t hold. So Trump modified his excuse. “Why would you give money to a country that you think is corrupt?”
That wasn’t convincing either. So the president tried again: He blocked the aid but never demanded anything in return for releasing it. “No quid pro quo!” Trump insisted.
A parade of officials told Congress that wasn’t true, either.
William B. Taylor Jr., chief U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, testified that the White House was holding up aid until Ukraine would publicly promise to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.
That meant the president’s defenders needed a new explanation: Yes, there was a quid pro quo, but it was part of a legitimate effort to get Ukraine to act against corruption.
“We do that all the time,” Trump’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, said. Except they don’t. The administration hasn’t blocked aid to any other country over corruption.
Out came a new defense: The Ukrainians didn’t know why their aid was blocked, so it couldn’t have been a quid quo pro. But testimony, under oath, disputed that.
Next argument: the fall-guy defense. Nobody’s proven that Trump was directly involved. Sure. Trump’s lawyer, his chief of staff and his bumbling ambassador to the European Union cooked up this plot by themselves and never mentioned it to their boss.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., offered another defense — No. 6, by my count — saying Trump and his aides are too inept to pull off a scheme like this. “They seem to be incapable of forming a quid pro quo,” he said.
Incompetence, alas, is not a valid defense in criminal trials. It’s unlikely to stave off impeachment either.
Down to the last-ditch defenses. None of this matters, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway argued, because Ukraine got its military aid in the end: “It’s not impeachable.”
And that brings us to the most important question: Does Trump’s misuse of office merit removal from office?
His defenders say no. “Show me something that is a crime,” Graham said.
That’s a different standard than the one Graham proposed in 1999, when he was one of the prosecutors in the impeachment of President Clinton. Then-Rep. Graham said the question was whether Congress “determines that your conduct as a public official is clearly out of bounds.”
More recently, another member of Congress said the standard should be “whether the person serving as president of the United States put their own interests, their personal interests, ahead of public service.” That was Mike Pence, now Trump’s vice president.
If the Democratic-led House impeaches Trump and he goes on trial in the Republican-led Senate, much of the debate will focus on that question: Did the president’s misconduct reach a level that requires his removal from office?
As any parent of any 6-year-old can tell you, a much simpler test is available: If Trump did nothing wrong, why can’t he get his story straight?
Doyle McManus is a Washington columnist for the Los Angeles Times and director of the journalism program at Georgetown University.
