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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.)

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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:

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Following the money around Trump and Ukraine - Columbia Journalism Review