After watching last Wednesday’s Republican defense of President Trump, I hope we all weren’t distracted by whether or not a “quid pro quo” existed in Trump’s interaction with Ukraine. Have we stooped so low?

The issue is whether the president of the United States solicited help from a foreign country for his re-election campaign. He did: On the edited transcript of his call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump asks specifically for an investigation of his top political opponent (Joe Biden) and seeks to clear the Russians of their election meddling. He has asked a foreign government to investigate an American citizen – his political opponent! Soliciting foreign campaign help is a crime, and the question for the House is whether it is a “high crime or misdemeanor.”

Everything else we know of. The withholding of congressionally approved military aid, Rudy Giuliani’s smear campaign against a career ambassador, the withholding of a needed White House meeting, the negotiations with Zelensky staff for a public statement on a Biden investigation, the damage to our bipartisan support for Ukraine – all those simply demonstrate how much the president was abusing his office in order to obtain foreign campaign help.

Let’s keep our eye on the real problem: soliciting help from a foreign country to enhance his personal chances to remain in power. Every impeachment question should be presented with a reminder of what the issues are: whether he solicited foreign help for electoral gain, and what pressure of his public office he was willing to bring to bear to get it.

Mary Henderson

Topsham

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