In the transcript, Trump sounded like a crooked capo trying to pressure a local businessman.
My preemptive sense of disappointment deepened the next morning when Trump announced that he would be releasing the transcript of the call. To say Trump is not the sharpest knife in the drawer is an insult to butter knives, but even he is not dumb enough to release a transcript of a call that would implicate him in global criminal conspiracy to interfere in an American election.
Right?
Wrong.
In the transcript, Trump sounded like a crooked capo trying to pressure a local businessman. Trump called his conversation with the Ukraine President—the “perfect call,” but it was an imperfect crime.3
In the following days, we would learn that the efforts to cover up this obviously impeachable offense involved the White House, the National Security Council, the intelligence community, and the Department of Justice. As an example, Attorney General Bill Barr who helped cover up the Mueller report played a similar role in this affair. Barr didn’t recuse himself from the investigation even though Trump names him in the call with Ukraine as a participant in the criminal conspiracy.
