Trump, the phone call, and consciousness of guilt
by Byron York
| November 04, 2019 12:35 AM
The July 25 call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Vlodomyr Zelensky is the central piece of evidence in the Democratic drive to remove the president from office. "That call was a smoking gun," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said after House Democrats voted to formalize their impeachment inquiry.
Trump has repeatedly said the call was "perfect," or, as he described it on Sunday, "perfecto." His defenders, or most of them, have declined to adopt that characterization. But importantly, the president, and others as well have also pointed to the circumstances of the Trump-Zelensky conversation as evidence that Trump had no intent to commit any sort of offense and certainly not one that the House would later deem impeachable.
"It's common sense," the president said last Thursday in an expansive Oval Office conversation after the House vote. "I've got 20-25 people on the phone call. I've got stenographers and all of these people on the telephone. Am I going to make a statement that's illegal or bad? I'm an intelligent person. Who would do a thing like that?"
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