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Two weeks ago, Trump, Inc., a podcast from WNYC and ProPublica, reminded listeners to follow the money in the Ukraine scandal. The impeachment inquiry is focused on whether or not there was a quid pro quo: military aid in exchange for an investigation into the Bidens and the 2016 election, host Andrea Bernstein said. Her cohost, Ilya Marritz, chimed in: We are going to look at a lot of the same events from a different vantage point: the business interests at play in the United States and in Ukraine. Over forty minutes, the podcast laid out a convoluted web of intrigue surrounding Trump; his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani; Giuliani associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman; Trump-allied lawyers (and regular Fox guests) Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova; and Dmitry Firtash, a Ukrainian oligarch with ties to the Kremlin and, according to the US Justice Department, Russian organized crime. The characters, Marritz said, are linked by fragments of a story that dont seem to fit togetheruntil they do.

In recent days, the financial angle has returned to the headlines. The New York Times reported yesterday that Giuliani identified Firtashwho is fighting extradition to the US on bribery chargesas a potential pressure point in his campaign to gather dirt on Joe Biden, whose past anticorruption push in Ukraine angered Firtash. In a rare interview, Firtash told the Times that he did retain Toensing and diGenova to help with his US legal woes, but denied having incriminating information about Biden or funding any campaign to get some. Elsewhere, an official with Ukraines state oil-and-gas company told the Wall Street Journal that Parnas and Fruman tried to enlist his help in a proposed takeover. Also according to the Journal, US prosecutors investigating Parnas and Fruman (who have already been indicted on campaign-finance-related charges) have subpoenaed people linked to Giuliani and his consulting firmpart of a broad probe that, the Journal reports, is investigating potential obstruction of justice, money laundering, conspiracy to defraud the United States, making false statements to the federal government, serving as an agent of a foreign government without registering with the Justice Department, donating funds from foreign nationals, making contributions in the name of another person or allowing someone else to use ones name to make a contribution, along with mail fraud and wire fraud. (Giuliani is not currently under indictment, and has denied wrongdoing.)

ICYMI:Bad Romance

Last night, with public impeachment proceedings at a lull (House investigators are busy compiling their report), these and related stories drove discussion on cable news. On Chris Hayess MSNBC show, Michael Isikoff, a veteran reporter with Yahoo News, raised the prospect that money funneled through Parnas and Fruman may have funded Giulianis legal work for Trump; if true, that raises a whole host of other questions about the financial benefits going to the president himself, Isikoff said. Another guest, CNBCs Christina Wilkie, noted that Parnas, Fruman, and Giuliani are people with a lot of avenues for revenue. And we really dont know what was coming from where, and I think that is one of the biggest questions still outstanding.

There is a lot we still dont know about the money flows involving Trumpworld and Ukraine, and what we do know is complicated. Still, the financial angle has felt somewhat underplayed in the impeachment story relative to its interestmore a subplot to the central political drama than a potentially integral part of the story.

Journalists tend to be attracted to stories that involve vast hidden intrigue; as a result, we can sometimes underplay obvious wrongdoingin this case, Trumps public admission that he asked Ukraine to investigate the Bidens. (As I wrote last month, as journalists, weve been taught to believe that the biggest scandals are those that require intense, meticulous digging; as human beings, weve been taught to believe that no right-minded person would own up to wrongdoing in such a haphazard way.) The murky Parnas/Fruman/Giuliani story offers an avenue for reporters to usefully drive intrigue forward. Yet too much impeachment coverage seems to channel this impulse by demanding ever higher standards of support for already established facts. (At the beginning of this story, Trump asking Ukraine for dirt on Democrats was treated as a central outrage; now it seems, in some quarters, to be secondary to hand-wringing about explicit proof that Trump ordered a quid pro quo on military aid specifically, and other wrinkles.) On Sundays Meet the Press, for example, Chuck Todd offered this exquisite example of false equivalence: It feels like the two sides are talking past each other: Republicans are making a political argument, Democrats are making a legal argument, and theyre going, How do you, the other side, not see what we see?

Yes, impeachment is a political process. But there is a risk of losing perspective on the facts hereof overcomplicating things we already know in order to contrive a sense of mystery that keeps news consumers hooked. That isnt just bad journalism; its also unnecessary. The real, broader story here is plenty mysterious on its merits.

Below, more on the Ukraine scandal:

Other notable stories:

ICYMI:Beyond Facts

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Following the money around Trump and Ukraine - Columbia Journalism Review

A week of impeachment hearings is a lot of information. Five minutes will get you caught up on all things Trump impeachment inquiry. Hannah Gaber, USA TODAY

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., is defending his decision to ask the State Department for documents related to the Bidens and Ukraine, after former Vice President Joe Biden said he was "embarrassed" bythe senator's movelast week.

Speaking on Fox News Radio on Monday, Graham pushed back against the 2020 Democrat, saying that the issue has "nothing to do with friendship" between the two politicians. Biden had said that he was "angered" because Graham "knows me, he knows my son."

"My friendship with Joe Biden, if he can't withstand me doing my job, it'snot the friendship I thought we had," Graham said.

Graham sent a letter to the State Department last week requesting records of Biden's interactions with Ukrainian officials. House Democrats are pursuing an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trumpfor an alleged pressure campaign to get the Ukrainian president to openinvestigations that would benefit him politically.

Meanwhile,President Donald Trump and his political allies have pushed the allegation, without evidence, that Biden called for the firing of a topUkrainianprosecutor to protect his son, who once sat on the board ofenergy company Burisma in Ukraine.

Biden pushed for the prosecutor's ouster for failing to pursue corruption cases, the consensus among international groups at the time, according to officials.

A Biden spokesperson said in a statement, "Republicans controlled both chambers of Congress for most of the last five years and said or did nothing to indicate they thought that this warranted attention."

Explainer: Biden, allies pushed out Ukrainian prosecutor because he didn't pursue corruption cases

Of the accusations against Trump, Graham said, "I don't see that. I don't see that being proven." Graham said that he would not give Democrats "a pass," while they continue to investigate Trump, and accused House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff of conducting an "un-American" impeachment process.

"I'm not going to create a country where only Republicans get investigated," Graham said. "... And we're going to ask questions of Hunter Biden's role, and getting the prosecutor fired."

In response to Biden's accusation that Trump has power over him, Graham said, "I'm doing this because somebody needs to do it."

"Lindsey is about to go down in a way that I think he's going to regret his whole life," Biden said."I say, Lindsey, I'm just embarrassed by what you're doing, for you."

"Don't feel bad about me. Don't worry about me. I am fine, Joe. You're a good man," Graham said Monday.

'I'm embarrassed by what you're doing': Joe Biden says Lindsey Graham will regret backing Trump amid Ukraine controversy

Graham said that he hopes his friendship with Biden will continue, but that somebody needs to look into the questions about Hunter Biden.

"I admire him as a person, I think he's always trying to do right by the country. I think he's made a lot of bad policy choices, but as a person, I like him," Graham said. "But we're not going to allow a system in America where only one side gets looked at. These are legitimate questions."

U.S. and Ukraine relations go further back than the now infamous phone call between Trump and Zelensky. We explain their relationship. Just the FAQs, USA TODAY

Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/11/25/lindsey-graham-defends-choice-pursue-joe-biden-ukraine-questions/4300384002/

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Graham: Joe Biden's role in Ukraine has 'nothing to do with friendship' - USA TODAY

When the manager of a car dealership, a Ukrainian immigrant, asked a 37-year-old man to clean up his trash, the man spit in the managers face, told him to go back to his own country and threatened to cut him with a box cutter.

Now that man, Harold Eugene Denson III, of Portland, Ore., will have to reflect on what his actions might have meant to the manager if he wants to avoid more punishment, that is.

As part of Mr. Densons sentence after pleading no contest to a bias crime and unlawful use of a weapon, Judge Christopher A. Ramras of Multnomah County Circuit Court ordered on Friday that he write a 500-word essay on the hardships of immigration.

Im not asking you to focus on any one particular country, Judge Ramras told Mr. Denson during the sentencing. What I am asking you to do is to put yourself into their shoes and position and write a report that explains some of the challenges of what it might be like for them coming to this country.

There are about 50,000 immigrants from the part of the world where the manager comes from living in the Portland metropolitan area, Judge Ramras noted during the hearing.

Mr. Denson, who has been homeless for a year, according to his lawyer, Autumn Shreve, has until March to submit the essay. If the court accepts it, he can withdraw his plea and the bias crime charge will be dropped. If not, Mr. Denson will be convicted and could face more penalties, according to a news release from the Multnomah County District Attorneys Office.

Mr. Denson pleaded no contest to the bias crime charge and to one count of unlawful use of a weapon on Friday. Mr. Denson, who has been in jail since August, was sentenced on the weapon charge to the 90 days he had already served. He was released on Monday, according to Ms. Shreve.

More than a week before the sentencing, Judge Ramras first met with Mr. Denson and Ms. Shreve to suggest the essay idea, Ms. Shreve said in an interview on Monday. When Mr. Denson agreed, Ms. Shreve formally proposed it to the state, she added. I think its more effective than just jail or straight probation, Ms. Shreve said. Mr. Denson is very willing and happy to do it, she added.

On Aug. 25, Mr. Denson was collecting cans on the property of a car dealership, according to his lawyer.

Prosecutors say he threw trash all over the property. The dealerships manager, an immigrant from Ukraine, approached Mr. Denson, gave him a trash bag and asked him to clean up the area, they said.

Mr. Denson thanked the manager before he suddenly became agitated and yelled that the car dealership was American soil and not the managers property, according to prosecutors. He then spit in the managers face, told him to go back to his own country and threatened to cut him with a box cutter, they said.

Ms. Shreve said that Mr. Denson had been collecting cans to redeem for 10 cents each when his bag broke. He had already started picking up the fallen cans when the manager approached, she added.

When the police responded, they found the box cutter in Mr. Densons pocket before arresting him.

Though this is the first time a client of hers will write an essay, Ms. Shreve said it was not entirely out of the ordinary for a sentence to include a letter of apology, paying victims or completing volunteer work.

Mr. Denson needs to understand the impact his actions had on the victim and our immigrant communities, Nicole Hermann, a Multnomah County deputy district attorney, said in the offices news release. This is an opportunity for him to reconcile his behavior through compassion, learning and understanding.

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He Spat on a Man From Ukraine. Now He Has to Write About the Immigrant Experience. - The New York Times

And tariff policy isnt the only area in which the administration seems to be using its power to punish corporations if they dont show proper political fealty.

Recently the Pentagon granted the huge Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract for cloud computing (yes, JEDI) to Microsoft, shocking observers who expected it to go to Amazon. Amazon is challenging the decision, claiming that it was punishment for critical reporting in The Washington Post, now owned by Jeff Bezos a claim that is entirely plausible, given Trumps own repeated declarations that he was going to give Bezos problems.

Trump officials claim, of course, that the decision process was squeaky-clean, based on expert judgment untainted by any political influence. But seriously, is anything clean in this administration? Are we really supposed to accept on faith that people who are willing to politicize weather forecasts were totally hands-off when it came to awarding a huge, lucrative contract to a company Trump considers an enemy?

When I and others point out the ways in which Trump is using crony capitalism to lock in political advantage, we tend to get two kinds of pushback. First, were told that we shouldnt feel sympathy for wealthy corporations. Second, were told that progressive Democrats also criticize some corporations, like Facebook, and have proposed a crackdown on some kinds of corporate behavior. So whats the difference?

Well, these critiques (willfully, one suspects) miss the point. What progressives are proposing are rules for corporate behavior that would apply equally to all companies, not be imposed selectively on corporations depending on their political orientation.

And the trouble with Trumps selective doling out of punishment isnt the harm it inflicts on corporations, its the incentives this regime creates for political sycophancy. American voters and American democracy, not Apple and Amazon which are, as it happens, notorious examples of tax avoidance are the victims we care about.

Put it this way: By using his political power to punish businesses that dont support him while rewarding those that do, Trump is taking us along the same path already followed by countries like Hungary, which remains a democracy on paper but has become a one-party authoritarian state in practice. And were already much further down that road than many people realize.

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Trump Gives U.S. Business the Ukraine Treatment - The New York Times

Donald Trump ought to be impeached and removed from office. This isnt what I thought two months ago, when the impeachment inquiry began. I argued that the evidence fell short of the standards of a prosecutable criminal act. I also feared impeachment might ultimately help Trump politically, as it had helped Bill Clinton in 1998. That second worry might still prove true.

But if the congressional testimonies of Marie Yovanovitch, Bill Taylor, Gordon Sondland, Alexander Vindman and especially Fiona Hill make anything clear, its that the presidents highest crime isnt what he tried to do to, or with, Ukraine.

Its that hes attempting to turn the United States into Ukraine. The judgment Congress has to make is whether the American people should be willing, actively or passively, to go along with it.

Ive followed Ukrainian politics fairly closely since 1999, when I joined the staff of The Wall Street Journal Europe. It has consistent themes that should sound familiar to American ears.

The first theme is the criminalization of political differences. Years before Trump led his followers in Lock Her Up chants against Hillary Clinton, then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych did exactly that against his own political rival, Yulia Tymoshenko, who was sentenced to seven years in prison on a variety of byzantine charges after she had narrowly lost the 2010 election.

She spent three years in prison before her release during the 2014 Maidan Revolution. Key to Yanukovychs efforts to discredit Tymoshenko was who else? Paul Manafort.

A second theme is the use of political office as a shield against criminal prosecution and as a vehicle for personal and familial enrichment. Why have so many of Ukraines oligarchs including Burisma Holdings founder Mykola Zlochevsky also served as government ministers? Simple: Because, until recently, it shielded them from criminal prosecution thanks to parliamentary immunity, while also providing them with the means to use government power for their own benefit.

The third theme is what one might call the netherworldization of political life, in which conspiracy theories abound, off-stage figures wield outsized influence, and channels of formal authority are disconnected from the real centers of power.

This reality came vividly to light in 2016, when a parliamentary effort to vote no confidence in the government of then-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk unexpectedly collapsed, thanks to the usual string-pulling from the countrys wealthiest power brokers. As Ukrainian political commentator Maxim Eristavi noted at the time, in Ukraine There are no party lines, no real policy debates, no ideological clashes: just cold-hearted vested interests and short-term alliances between various oligarchic groups.

The fourth theme is covert Russian interference, usually facilitated by local actors.

Ukraine offers the worlds most extreme example of this kind of interference (nearby Georgia is a close second), since large parts of the country have been seized outright by Russia and its proxies. But long before the Kremlins little green men arrived in Crimea in 2014, Russia and its agents were using every dirty trick at their disposal, from poisoning a future Ukrainian president with dioxin to poisoning the media landscape with disinformation. Too often, it worked, whether because its victims were suggestible, corrupt, fearful or simply not paying attention.

That last point was also made by Fiona Hill in her testimony on Thursday, where she warned members of the House Intelligence Committee that they ran the risk of themselves falling victims to politically driven falsehoods, regarding a bogus theory about Ukrainian political interference, that so clearly advance Russian interests.

Yet the person who is both the principal consumer and purveyor of those falsehoods is the president of the United States, just as he has been a purveyor of so many other conspiracy theories. Even now, this should astound us.

It doesnt, because weve been living in a country undergoing its own dismal process of Ukrainianization: of treating fictions as facts; and propaganda as journalism; and political opponents as criminals; and political offices as business ventures; and personal relatives as diplomatic representatives; and legal fixers as shadow cabinet members; and extortion as foreign policy; and toadyism as patriotism; and fellow citizens as human scum; and mortal enemies as long-lost friends and then acting as if all this is perfectly normal. This is more than a high crime. Its a clear and present danger to our security, institutions, and moral hygiene.

Its to the immense credit of ordinary Ukrainians that, in fighting Russian aggression in the field and fighting for better governance in Kyiv, they have shown themselves worthy of the worlds support. And its to the enduring shame of the Republican Party that they have been willing to debase our political standards to the old Ukrainian level just when Ukrainians are trying to rise to our former level.

The one way to stop this is to make every effort to remove Trump from office. It shouldnt have to wait a year.

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The United States Is Starting to Look Like Ukraine - The New York Times