CENTRAL VIEW for Monday, November 4, 2019

The Ukraine Treaty: Is enforcement impeachable?

The behavior of the Democrat majority in the U.S. House of Representatives with regard to Ukraine deserves some historical context and perspective: In 2012, the international accounting firm Ernst & Young rated Ukraine among the world’s three most corrupt nations. By 2017, Ukraine had improved to be only the 9th most corrupt nation.

In 1998, President Clinton and Ukraine signed an anti-crime treaty, providing for cooperation in criminal investigations, to include the taking of testimony, providing documents, and even executing requests for searches and seizures. The treaty is a virtual carte blanche for Ukraine and the U.S. to investigate each other.

Interfering in U.S. elections is a crime. Using U.S. tax dollars to force the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor is a crime. Both crimes are subject to investigation under the terms of the 1998 anti-crime treaty.

Fast forward to the present: Ukraine’s reputation with President Trump was not improved when President Trump learned the Ukrainian government that was in power concurrent with the Obama-Biden Administration, tried to get Hillary Clinton elected president.

Recall, when Putin took Crimea away from Ukraine and then began to invade eastern Ukraine, Obama-Biden only sent Ukraine some blankets and food. But, despite his misgivings about Ukrainian corruption, President Trump has already provided Ukraine with some grenade launchers and other lethal weapons.

Now, since the April, 2019, Ukrainian election of anti-corruption President Zelensky, President Trump has shown greater willingness to provide Ukraine with even more lethal weaponry to use against Putin’s forces in eastern Ukraine. That, however, has not been enough for the pro-Ukraine Deep Staters in the State Department and within the National Security Council (NSC).

The NSC is chock full of unelected Obama holdovers with advanced degrees. Some, but not all, of them think they should be conducting U.S. foreign policy rather than the elected President of the United States.

That was demonstrated recently when an Army officer shed the normal civilian attire of NSC staffers and donned his Army Blue uniform to go to Capitol Hill to offer his "opinion" about a telephone call between President Trump and President Zelensky.

An active duty officer wearing his uniform for political purposes is just as reprehensible as retired personnel wearing their uniforms for commercial purposes. While the NSC staffer did take some shrapnel from a roadside bomb in Iraq, he has zero decorations for valor in combat. He is merely a career staff officer and has only earned what those of us who have been decorated for valor in combat call "good conduct" medals.

If you read the official transcript of the July, 2019, telephone conversation between Presidents Trump and Zelensky, one can tell President Trump’s reference to "Crowd Strike" shows he is still irked about the previous Ukrainian government’s efforts to elect Hillary Clinton. Moreover, he wants to find out more about former Vice President Joe Biden’s televised bragging about how Biden made the firing of the Ukrainian prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, the quid pro quo for receiving $1 billion in U.S. aid. Under the 1998 U.S.-Ukraine anti-crime treaty, both of those acts are crimes, making them subject to further investigation. Can a U.S president be impeached for doing his duty under a treaty? We report. You decide.

©2019. William Hamilton.

William Hamilton, is a laureate of the Oklahoma Military Hall of Fame, the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame, the Nebraska Aviation Hall of Fame, the Colorado Aviation Hall of Fame, and the Oklahoma University Army ROTC Wall of Fame. Dr. Hamilton is the author of Formula for Failure in Vietnam: The Folly of Limited Warfare, McFarland Books, (2019). For pre-publication orders: Toll free: (800) 253-2187 "Central View," can also be seen at: www.central-view.com.

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Email: william@central-view.com