Ben Shapiro: 'No evidence' of a cover-up or quid pro quo in Ukraine controversy
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Conservative author Ben Shapiro asked Friday what basis House Democrats had for pursuing impeachment of President Trump, noting that they lacked evidence for their two main accusations.
"So far, there’s no evidence of a cover-up (both the transcript and the whistleblower complaint are public), no evidence of quid pro quo (multiple reports state that the Ukrainians didn’t even know military aid was being withheld)," Shapiro tweeted. "So what exactly is the theory of impeachment?"
INTEL CHIEF DEFENDS HANDLING OF TRUMP CALL COMPLAINT, SPARS WITH SCHIFF IN TENSE HEARING
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On Thursday, the House Intelligence Committee posted the whistleblower report alerting officials to allegedly problematic statements President Trump made during a July 25 call with Ukraine's president. On Thursday, the committee interrogated Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, whom Democrats suggested participated in a cover-up by withholding the complaint from Congress.
Shapiro said it was absurd to claim that the Trump administration of a cover-up since a memorandum of Trump's phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was released Wednesday.
"So just to be clear, the big bombshell from the whistleblower report is that Trump covered up a transcript that he just released to the public yesterday?" Shapiro tweeted on Thursday.
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During "The Ben Shapiro Show" on Friday, Shapiro added that Democrats held a "miasmatic theory of impeachment" that claimed Trump was generally corrupt and shouldn't have used his power as president to request an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden, his potential opponent in the 2020 election.
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"That theory really does not hold water," Shapiro said, "because the presidents are constantly talking in both their capacity as presidents and as candidates. Barack Obama did this famously in 2012 when he said to Dmitry Medvedev, then the president of Russia, that he would give the Russians flexibility after the election if they would back off for now."
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"Was that an abuse of his power? Yeah, kind of, but did that mean it was impeachable? Probably not," Shapiro added.