President Donald Trump’s reported attempts to force Ukraine into digging up dirt on potential presidential opponent Joe Biden are “treachery if not treason,” says a Harvard constitutional law professor.
This week, new details emerged about the mysterious whistleblower in the intelligence community who brought forward what was reported to be an urgent complaint. As The Inquisitr reported, that complaint is believed to have been related to a phone call that Donald Trump made to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. While the exact nature of Trump’s conversation was not reported, House Democrats have been investigating whether Donald Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, tried to strong-arm the Ukrainian government into helping Trump’s 2020 re-election bid by digging up dirt on Joe Biden’s family.
Laurence Tribe, a Harvard professor and frequent critic of President Trump, said on Friday that Trump “seems to know no bounds” in his behavior to help himself at the expense of America. Tribe said that Trump has violated the emoluments clause by using his position to increase his personal wealth and promote his business and bends policy toward foreign governments willing to help his companies.
Tribe hinted that the latest allegations against the president are the most serious he has faced yet.
“And now, we understand, he may have been making some kind of deal with Ukraine, perhaps to get information of a negative kind about Joe Biden’s son in exchange for aid to Ukraine,” Tribe said in an interview with MSNBC, via HuffPost . “It’s treachery if not treason and it’s bribery and it’s unacceptable.”
The whistleblower complaint has been at the center of a row between the House Judiciary Committee and the Trump administration. The complaint was lodged back in August but was not passed along to the House committee in apparent violation of rules regarding these complaints. Critics have accused the Trump administration of trying to bury the complaint in an attempt to protect the president, and the committee is now demanding that it be turned over.
On Thursday, Giuliani appeared to admit that the complaint centers on Trump’s attempts to force Ukraine into digging up dirt on Joe Biden, specifically his son Hunter Biden’s time on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company.
A President telling a Pres-elect of a well known corrupt country he better investigate corruption that affects US is doing his job. Maybe if Obama did that the Biden Family wouldn’t have bilked millions from Ukraine and billions from China; being covered up by a Corrupt Media.
— Rudy W. Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) September 20, 2019
Giuliani: It’s sad to watch what happened to you! You’re a sellout! Cuomo: Sad to watch what happened to ME? I’M a sellout?
[then]
Giuliani: You want to cover some ridiculous charge that I urged the Ukranian government to investigate corruption. Well I did! And I’m proud of it! pic.twitter.com/P36iOcJ8d5
— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) September 20, 2019
Donald Trump had been threatening to withhold $250 million in military aid to Ukraine, which drew strong bipartisan backlash. President Trump released the aid this week, as the whistleblower story was starting to emerge.