By Susan E. Rice
Don’t be confused. These two cases have almost nothing in common. While I was President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, Mr. Biden took repeated steps — at the president’s behest — to advance a widely supported, completely overt United States government policy to encourage Ukrainian officials to aggressively combat endemic corruption and bolster Ukraine’s nascent democracy.
Mr. Biden’s pressure on President Petro Poroshenko to remove his poor-performing prosecutor general, including by threatening to withhold additional aid, was fully consistent with American interests. It was also a policy fully supported by the International Monetary Fund and our European partners, who along with the United States were providing billions in economic assistance to support the newly elected Ukrainian government.
This broadly backed anti-corruption policy had nothing to do with Mr. Biden, his son Hunter, or any other individual. Moreover, the policy was conducted transparently and openly for all to see. As has been widely reported, the prosecutor general also was not pursuing any inquiry of Hunter Biden or the owner of the company whose board he sat on, Burisma, at the time of the vice president’s intervention. Indeed, by pressing for the removal of the corrupt prosecutor general, Mr. Biden backed a policy that increased the likelihood that a responsible replacement might pursue Burisma’s owner and others.
By contrast, President Trump conducted absolutely no government business when he spoke for thirty minutes with Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky. Instead, Mr. Trump solicited foreign interference in the 2020 election to advance his own political interests. Mr. Trump clearly pressured Mr. Zelensky to investigate Mr. Biden, the president’s most formidable and likely political opponent, as well as his son. By withholding almost $400 million in urgently needed military assistance appropriated by Congress for Ukraine, which is still combating the occupation of its eastern territory by Russia, and using it to extort Mr. Zelensky’s cooperation, Mr. Trump again put his personal interests above our national security.
Mr. Trump further pressured Mr. Zelensky to pursue an unsubstantiated allegation that Ukraine, not Russia, was the country that interfered in the 2016 election and that the hacked Democratic National Committee servers are hiding somewhere in Ukraine. This fantastical charge serves only to benefit Russia and to contradict the central findings of the intelligence community and the Mueller report. It was Russia that interfered in our democratic process.
Additionally, according to the whistle-blower complaint, the Trump administration sought to conceal Mr. Trump’s blatant abuse of power by hiding the full verbatim transcript of the call on a highly classified computer server that very few officials can access. This constitutes yet another abuse of power, because the highly classified system is reserved only for the most sensitive national security information. It is not to be used to bury presidential misdeeds that undermine national security.
The differences in these two engagements are stark. In Mr. Biden’s case, the purpose of the intervention was to pursue a widely accepted United States policy objective in the full light of day. In Mr. Trump’s case, it was to advance a personal, political interest in opposition to the national interest, and it was deliberately hidden from view.
Vice President Joe Biden addressing Ukraine’s parliament in 2015.CreditValentyn Ogirenko/ReutersAs with so many things in the age of Trump, norms and practices are discarded daily. Traditional, responsible national security decision-making is dying by a thousand cuts. In order to salvage it for the next president, it’s necessary to recall what is actually normal.
First, before the president places a call to a foreign leader, he normally would carefully review a background memo prepared by the National Security Council staff and designed to advance American interests with that country. The president would typically adhere broadly to these talking points unless he had some concerns about them, in which case they would be revised. Either way they would remain part of the archival record.
Second, the president would usually take the call in the Oval Office (or less frequently in the residence), with the national security adviser or other senior staff and experts present to answer questions, provide real-time feedback and take notes. Additional staff in the White House Situation Room would listen to the call and collectively construct a verbatim transcript for the record to be shared with cabinet level officials and others with a “need to know.”
Finally, the transcript would be stored appropriately on the basis of its classification under national security guidelines and remain accessible to those who need to see it.
As is often the case in the Trump administration, the traditional system has broken down. Mr. Trump apparently ignored any briefing memo as he talked to Mr. Zelensky, delivering his own unscripted message that served solely his personal interests. The note takers did their job, but then, reportedly aghast at Mr. Trump’s extortionary message, watched as White House lawyers apparently spirited away the evidence. Mr. Trump never raised longstanding United States concerns about Russia’s occupation of Ukraine, the hot war that continues to kill Ukrainians or the importance of sustaining American and European Union sanctions against Russia. He only talked about his own vindictive, partisan agenda.
Today, we are squarely in uncharted territory — where the whims of an unfettered president regularly override decency, the law and the country’s interest. Most Republicans in Congress couldn’t care less about the president’s flagrant abuses of power or their oaths to uphold the Constitution. But they should care that he is undermining our national security by advancing policies that clearly benefit an adversary, Russia, while undermining our electoral process.
Democrats are fully justified in opening an impeachment inquiry, not least to underscore that someone in Washington still knows the difference between right and wrong. In the meantime, it’s our duty as individual citizens to follow the facts and resist being manipulated by relentless attempts to malign the truth.