Trump claims it’s his duty to ask foreign countries for help in investigating corruption

As the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s conduct in office formally goes on a rapid pace this past week — with testimonies from the inspector general of the intelligence committee, Michael Atkinson, and from Kurt Volker, the former special envoy to Ukraine.

The president offered new defenses for seeking out foreign leaders’ help to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, the leading 2020 Democratic presidential candidate.

The president’s Republican defenders meanwhile pointed to specific text messages between senior U.S. diplomats saying that Trump proposed no such quid pro quo.

But Fil-Am political analyst Cheryl Quinio Blodgett pointed out that one of the main damaging evidence against the president has already come out from the White House when they released the five-page memo, summarizing the July 25th phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian president.

“The transcripts as written shows a clear violation of campaign finance laws where you cannot solicit, it is illegal to solicit from a foreign government any aid or assistance in a campaign.”

By all appearances, the President’s brazen and unprecedented appeal to China and to Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden is wrong and appalling.

— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) October 4, 2019

When the only American citizen President Trump singles out for China’s investigation is his political opponent in the midst of the Democratic nomination process, it strains credulity to suggest that it is anything other than politically motivated.

— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) October 4, 2019

Meanwhile, Republican senator Mitt Romney on Friday said on Twitter that the president’s action to push other nations to investigate Biden was wrong and appalling. He added that it strains credulity to suggest that it is anything other than politically motivated.