I'll write separately, @hughhewitt , about the Hunter Biden testimony. Let's stipulate for the sake of argument that Hunter Biden was part of something corrupt. That would not justify Trump withholding aid or insisting upon a *public announcement* aimed not at cleaning up 1/

corruption in Ukraine but at sullying Trump's likely opponent. Everything about Rudy's showboating and the emphasis on a public announcement suggests this. So too the president's inability to point to any investigations of corruption he has asked for that do not involve Biden. 2/

So the crux of the investigation is about what Trump was asking for and why, and that doesn't change even if one assumes (as I do not) that Hunter Biden was guilty of something. There is no mystery about Joe Biden's actions to get the prosecutor in Ukraine fired, that was a 3/

widely shared international goal *actually* targeted at reducing corruption, and there's no indication (indeed, there is evidence to the contrary) that it was to inhibit investigation into Hunter. So this is a side show. 4/4