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  “It’s Better to Be on TV than by Phone:” Corruption Is a Process

  
  Back when LOLGOP and I were doing Ball of Thread — our podcast explaining how Trump trained Republicans to despise rule of law — there was one post and one episode we never got around to.

  I wanted to explain how I’ve come to think of corruption not just as a thing — “corruption strips countries of their assets” — or an adjective — “Trump is the most corrupt president, ever” — but as a process.

  That process not only acquires a momentum of its own that is difficult to reverse, which is one of the things you always hear about corruption. But the process can be used as a tool. The process of corruption can be useful for powerful people for more than just the immediate exchange (and the relationships of secrecy) it creates, but also because corrupt institutions and countries are weaker and easier to manipulate.

  I don’t think this is any great insight. It is consistent with all the far more scholarly work on corruption, particularly Brian Klaas’ Corruptible and Anne Applebaum’s Autocracy Inc, both of which I highly recommend. It is just the lens through which I have viewed the process by which Trump thoroughly corrupted the Republican Party, and in so doing, largely destroyed the country.

  And because Trump’s whack bid to steal Venezuela’s oil involves the corrupt Venezuelan who played a role in Trump’s 2019 impeachment, now’s a great time to finally write that post.

  Counterfactuals are never 20/20. We can never be sure what might have happened but for certain decisions, but for certain events.

  But fuck it — let’s try it here.

  Do this: Take a minute to think about what would have happened if a whistleblower had not narced out Trump’s bid to extort Volodymyr Zelenskyy on that July 25, 2019 Perfect Phone Call? What would have happened if Adam Schiff hadn’t found a way to make it go public? What would have happened if Trump had not released the Perfect Phone Call transcript on September 25, 2019, just before the two men would meet publicly at the UNGA, in an absolutely astonishing meeting given everything that has happened since?

  What would have happened if it had all remained secret, if Zelenskyy had done … we don’t know what … in response to Trump’s demand and Trump had simply given Ukraine the security support Congress had ordered him to give?

  Go ahead — go think about that for a minute!

  

  Before I explain how I have thought about that question, let me first note that that call — a call between the predictably corrupt Donald Trump and his fellow celebrity President — was carefully orchestrated. Seven years later will still don’t know all the ways that it was orchestrated, except that Rudy Giuliani and his ability to bypass the professional bureaucracy that no longer exists in Trump 2.0 was at the center of it. We know that Rudy was led down that path by two grifters who had bought access to Trump starting with payments to Brian Ballard. Or rather — according to Lev Parnas’ selectively honest memoir — one mobbed-up grifter, Igor Fruman (who by the way was represented by Todd Blanche in his criminal case) sought out Parnas because he knew Parnas (who had prior ties to Ivana Trump) had already bought his way into Trump’s inner circle.

  I knew Igor Fruman through common friends. Born in Belarus, his family emigrated to Detroit when the USSR was shedding even more Jews, Igor was six years older than me and had moved to South Florida, where the Russian, Ukrainian and Belorussian communities were tight. Still, he spent most of his time in Ukraine where he made his money.

  I knew about Igor from various Jewish charities we were both involved in and mutual friends, but we weren’t really friends at the time. Igor became interested in me because of the pictures I was posting of myself with Trump on social media and because I was hosting events for Russians for Trump. Igor wanted to get deals done in the petroleum industry and thought I could help.

  He owned two popular nightclubs in Kyiv, Mafia Rave and the more upscale Buddha Bar. Both places were very popular with well-heeled men from both the West and East. They mingled at Buddha Bar, got to know each other and made deals, often huge deals.

  And after Fruman latched onto the access to Trump that Parnas had paid for, the two of them ended up leading Rudy on a Choose Your Own Adventure Novel seeking dirt on Hunter and Joe Biden, reaching out to one (Viktor Shokin) after another (Yuriy Lutsenko) after another (Dmitry Firtash) after another (Andrii Derkach) corrupt Ukrainian offering to deal that dirt.

  The adventure started, at least according to Parnas’ telling, when Rudy’s former prosecutor buddy Bart Schwartz passed on a tip claiming Ukrainian corruption. And can you believe your luck? Rudy got that tip while he was sitting right there in the Grand Havana Room where, just a few years earlier, Paul Manafort (who would also be represented by Todd Blanche, in his New York case) had shared campaign strategy with Konstantin Kilimnik, just hours after a meeting with Rudy and Trump!

  Rudy was sitting there in the Grand Havana Room with a different Ukrainian, one who could act as Rudy’s guide to hunt this piece of dirt on Hunter and Joe Biden.

  It was one of those days when Giuliani and I were just hanging out at our favorite place, The Grand Havana Room. Operating under the belief that Giuliani would deliver on his promises, I was still very friendly with Trump’s sidekick. There was nothing like The Grand Havana. A private club with a panoramic view of Manhattan, it had the best food, the best drinks and, of course, the finest cigars. He could stay there all day, just doing nothing and shooting the breeze.

  But that’s not my style. I have to work. And that’s exactly what I was doing. Giuliani and I might have been friends, but I also knew that he was the key to my future success. So, we were talking about ways to get my business off the ground when he excused himself for an important phone call.

  It was Bart Schwartz. I didn’t know him personally, but I did know that he used to be a prosecutor under Giuliani at the SDNY and the two had stayed in touch for years. Schwartz was then acting as a receiver for a hedge fund (a post that would later end with him in big trouble with the SEC), but still kept his eyes and ears open. He had a tip that he thought Giuliani might be interested in.

  Giuliani told me that Schwartz had heard that Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, had been involved in something perhaps a bit shadier than mere conflict of interest in Ukraine. Apparently, there had been a couple of letters, whistle blower complaints.

  Giuliani was alive with excitement. I had never seen him so happy. He’s a man of strong emotions, but none more pressing than hate. He had no time for Democrats, especially the country club type he considered the Bidens to be. Making it all the sweeter, Biden was the Democrats’ most likely pick to run against Trump in 2020.

  And it was Ukraine! He was sitting right beside a well-connected expert on that very country. Giuliani could not believe his luck.

  And that’s how it happened that Lev and Igor, with the help of Rudy, got the US Ambassador to Ukraine, who supported anti-corruption efforts, fired. And that’s how Trump came to be on the phone with the newly elected President of Ukraine — elected on a strong anti-corruption platform! — making asks that Rudy and Lev and Igor had led Trump to believe would hit paydirt.

  “If it’s what you say I love it, especially later in the summer.”

  When the story of that Perfect Phone Call gets told, it is always a story about what Trump did. The story, told that way, hides all the work that went into it, the purchased access, the perfectly cultivated mob ties, the appeals to both Rudy and Trump’s known venality.

  But if you look at it from the perspective of the mob ties that orchestrated that phone call, then you see that the call was at least in part an attempt to use Trump’s corruption to corrupt the newly elected President of Ukraine, the guy who had been elected on a platform of fighting corruption but who was also desperate to protect his country against Russia. That the whole scheme was an attempt to capitalize on the failed attempt to use Hunter Biden’s corruption, a process that started in 2014 and leveraged Hunter’s addiction and financial needs, against his father, who also was fighting corruption in Ukraine, that was just gravy.

  Once you corrupt someone, you can find any number of ways to exploit that corruption in the future.

  I have three opinions about what would have happened if that whistleblower had not spoken up, had not risked his career and freedom to reveal how Trump was using funds appropriated by Congress to make a corrupt demand of the Ukrainian President elected on a platform of fighting corruption.

  First, that whistleblower’s ethical decision had absolutely no effect on Trump’s corrupt purpose (except, perhaps, for Lev and Igor). Rudy Giuliani kept up his pursuit of corrupt dirt on Joe Biden. Even in the middle of impeachment, the White House did not stop Rudy from traveling to visit suspected Russian spy Andrii Derkach in December 2019. According to Chuck Grassley, DOJ performed what looks like its end of a quid pro quo in that same month, shutting down an investigation of Burisma that had been started in 2016, shutting down an investigation of Burisma’s corruption smack dab in the middle of an impeachment defense that purported to be interested in corruption at Burisma. Worse still, Bill Barr set up an entire side channel that exonerated Rudy for his knowing outreach to a Russian spy and served as the vehicle via which a different corrupt Ukrainian, Alexander Smirnov, criminally framed Hunter and Joe Biden.

  The whistleblower’s sacrifice did not change a fucking thing about the effort, with participation from both Trump’s personal lawyer and his Attorney General (since merged as one in the person of Todd Blanche), to frame Joe and Hunter Biden to help Trump’s election. All that still happened.

  It’s even worse though, and this is what Democrats need to both understand and prepare for as they map out how to rein in Trump’s corruption if and when they win back the House. Not only didn’t impeachment slow the corrupt effort kicked off in that meeting in The Grand Havana Room, but I firmly believe that Trump exploited the polarization of the country to use impeachment as a means to demand loyalty from virtually every Republican save Justin Amash in the House and Mitt Romney in the Senate, the latter of whom had the money to pay for private security that gave him the courage to vote for one but not both articles of impeachment.

  Romney confessed that he’d spent much of the impeachment trial hoping a way out would present itself: “I did not want to get here.” In fact, that was part of the reason he wanted former National Security Adviser John Bolton to testify about what Trump had told him. “I had the hope that he would be able to say something exculpatory and create reasonable doubt, so I wouldn’t have to vote to convict,” Romney said.

  [snip]

  When I asked Romney why none of his fellow Republicans had reached the same conclusion, he attempted diplomacy. “I’m not going to try and determine the thinking or motives of my colleagues,” he said. “I think it’s a mistake for any senator to try and get in the head of another senator and judge them.” But as he discussed the various rationalizations put forth by other Republican senators, he seemed to grow exasperated. He took particular issue with the idea—currently quite trendy in his caucus—that Trump’s fate should be decided at the ballot box, not in the Senate.

  “I would have liked to have abdicated my responsibility as I understood it under the Constitution and under the writing of the Founders by saying, ‘Let’s leave this to the voters.’” But, he said, “I’m subject to my own conscience.”

  When I asked how it felt to be formally disinvited from this month’s Conservative Political Action Conference, he laughed and noted that he hadn’t attended the conference since 2013. But it seems clear that his journey from GOP standard-bearer to party supervillain has been jarring.

  Remember: The two articles of impeachment were, first, that Trump corruptly asked a foreign country for election help and, second, that Trump ordered his government — including, among others, current CBO head Russ Vought, current DOJ head of National Security John Eisenberg, current Deputy Director of CIA Mike Ellis, and Brian McCormack — who carried out Trump’s purge of the National Security Council before being purged himself (possibly as a scapegoat for Signalgate)  — to defy subpoenas from Congress.

  Every single Republican Senator, save Mitt, was willing to claim to believe that Trump was chasing corruption, not acting on his own corruption. Or perhaps for many Republicans, they just did not give a shit what Trump did to stay in power, they were perfectly cool using taxpayer dollars to extort election help. But one way or another, every single Republican Senator but Mitt — including Richard Burr, Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Ben Sasse, and Pat Toomey, all of whom would later go on to vote for Trump’s 2021 impeachment, for which Cassidy has since paid with his seat — every single Senator bought into the bullshit Trump was selling. And every Republican Senator, including Mitt, were cool with Trump blowing off Congress’ sacred duty of impeachment.

  And that’s one of the values of corruption, as a process. I can’t tell you how many of the GOP Senators were already so venal, so polarized, they were going to be cool with what Trump did one way or another. Some of them — people like Marsha Blackburn and Ron Johnson and Rick Scott — they were already so corrupt they were bound to applaud Trump’s extortion. But for a good number, they were pushed by partisanship and cowardice and the cover provided by Trump’s lies to do something that they might not have done before Donald Trump came along. This process made them into far worse people than they had been before Trump came along. And few of them — perhaps only John Bolton, who was too cowardly to testify truthfully — have acknowledged since how they debased themselves. I don’t think even Liz Cheney has come clean with her corrupt vote against impeachment in 2019.

  Impeachment was a tool Trump used to make every single Republican (save Amash and Mitt) into far worse people. From that point forward they were going to be, and have been, for the most part, far easier to manipulate, far easier to buy off. Trump used impeachment to make corruption the price of admission to the MAGAt Republican Party, that corruption is a tool he has exploited over and over ever since, and that corruption is what has prevented Republicans from standing up against Trump’s destruction of the United States.

  But then there’s Zelenskyy, the real mystery in this game of second guessing.

  It is impossible to know what would have happened if that call were not made public (frankly, I’m not convinced we know all that happened until it was made public). On the call, Zelenskyy slathers Trump with flattery, parroting Trump’s favorite words back to him.

  I would like to confess to you that I had an opportunity to learn from you. We used quite a few of your skills and knowledge and were able to use .it as an example for our elections and yes it is true that these were unique elections.

  [snip]

  we wanted to drain the swamp here in our country

  But Zelenskyy still does that. Seven years later, with the exception of that famous meeting in the White House where Trump tried to sell Zelenskyy out, Zelenskyy still butters everyone up, on a near daily basis. It’s one thing that makes him successful. And that still includes Trump.

  Often forgot, though, Zelenskyy agreed to Trump’s asks, both for an investigation into the server and for an investigation of Burisma.

  For me as a President, it is very important and we are open for any future cooperation. We are ready to· open a new page on cooperation in relations between the United States and Ukraine. For that purpose, I just recalled our ambassador from United States and he will be replaced by a very competent and very experienced ambassador who will work hard on making sure that our two nations are getting closer. I would also like and hope to see him having your trust and your  confidence and have personal relations·with you so we can cooperate even more so. I will personally tell you that one of my assistants spoke with Mr. Giuliani just recently and we are hoping very much that Mr. Giuliani will be able to travel to Ukraine and we will meet once he comes to Ukraine. I just wanted to assure you once again that you have nobody but friends around us. I will make sure that I surround myself with the best and most experienced people. I also wanted to tell you that we are friends. We are great friends and you Mr. President have. friends in our country so we can continue our strategic partnership. I also plan to surround myself with great people and in addition to that investigation, I guarantee as the President of Ukraine that all the investigations will be done openly and candidly.

  [snip]

  [Zelenskyy’s new prosecutor] will look. into the situation, specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue. The issue of the investigation of the case is actually the issue of making sure to restore the honesty so we will take care of that and will work on the investigation of the case. [my emphasis]

  To be sure, Zelenskyy caveated his answers, especially regarding the Burisma investigation, with language about transparency (and remember, part of this, where it says “the company,” was edited in the transcription process to protect Trump), and so we can’t tell how far he would have gone to feed Trump’s demands for a Burisma investigation if this call had not been made public.

  But there were reports that Zelenskyy intended to do a CNN interview on September 13 to announce that investigation, just days after Trump released the aid.

  He was going to do it.

  And what we do know is that Zelensky backed Trump’s attack on Marie Yovanovitch, the ambassador who, like Joe Biden, had been helping Ukraine fight corruption.

  On top of that, I would kindly ask you if you have any additional information that you can provide to us, it would be very helpful for the investigation to make sure that we administer justice in our country with regard to the Ambassador to the United States from Ukraine as far as I recall her name was Ivanovich. It was great that you were the first one who told me that she was a bad ambassador because I agree with you 100%.

  In the expected secrecy of that phone call, Zelenskyy joined Trump in his attack on Yovanovitch.

  And while Zelenskyy began that joint appearance on September 25 with a comment about how much better it is to discuss corrupt investigations on TV than it is on a secret phone call, he nevertheless played his part, denying that Trump had pressured him, an important denial in Trump’s ultimately weathering of an impeachment.

  Reporter: Have you felt any pressure from President Trump to investigate Joe Biden and Hunter Biden?

  Zelenskyy: I think you read everything. I think you read text. I’m sorry but I don’t want to be involved to democratic, open [asks how to say вибори in English] elections, elections of USA. No, you heard that we had, I think, good phone call. It was normal, we spoke about many things. And I [shrugs] so, I think think, and you read it, that nobody push it, push me.

  Trump: In other words, no pressure.

  I’ll be honest: We can’t know but I think if this all hadn’t blown up, Zelenskyy would have given Trump what he wanted. I think it would have taken him down a path where his efforts to defend Ukraine against corruption — and therefore his efforts to defend against Russian dominance — would have failed.

  Instead, Zelenskyy has evolved into perhaps most sophisticated leader of our time — still fighting efforts to compromise him with corruption, and fighting even more persistent efforts to defeat Russian-backed disinformation claiming he was corrupt. I think the exposure of that Perfect Phone Call changed the course of history, but via Zelenskyy, not Trump.

  The whistleblower’s effort to expose Trump’s corruption failed to have any meaningful effect in the US. If anything, Trump used it as an opportunity to corrupt Republicans who would once have (and who did, in the case of 2016 and Russia) object to foreign interference in US elections. Trump used it as an tool to demand that Republicans sell out their own institutional prerogatives, appropriations (which never even made it into impeachment) and subpoena power, to protect Trump and with him the Republican Party.

  Corruption is a process, and by orchestrating that Perfect Phone Call, whatever mobsters were behind the effort got Trump to corrupt almost every single Republican member of Congress, lowering the bar for the next corrupt demand.

  But I do suspect that everything would have been different, the entire course of Ukrainian history and with it the history of Europe, would have been different if that call had not been exposed, because it forced Zelenskyy and gave him the means of distancing himself from Trump’s efforts to corrupt him.

  It is easy to say that Trump is corrupt, the most corrupt President ever, that his corruption steals from Americans and destroys the country. It is easy to correctly describe the corruption that has always been a key part of Trump’s success.

  But if you understand that corruption is a process, the tool by which Trump is easily manipulated, and the tool by which Trump himself has debased virtually every single Republican and coerced them to cede their institutional prerogatives, you understand how it happened and how the corruption he demanded years ago still prevents Republicans from standing up to Trump to save the country.

  The post “It’s Better to Be on TV than by Phone:” Corruption Is a Process appeared first on emptywheel.

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