Extortion

On July 25, 2019, Trump called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and asked him for a favor: a public announcement of investigations into Trump’s political opponents. After he hung up, White House lawyers immediately sprang into action, burying the records of the incriminating phone call on a secret server and swearing those on the line to secrecy.

That call was part of a broader effort, a shadow foreign policy agenda in which a coterie of Trump advisers—including Rudy Giuliani, Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, and Special Envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker—demanded political favors in exchange for first a White House meeting and, later, $400 million in desperately needed military aid. In this episode, host Max Bergmann outlines how that extortion scheme came to be, starting with the Trump administration’s attempts to build a relationship with the new Ukrainian government and leading to the infamous July 25 call that prompted a whistleblower complaint and launched impeachment proceedings.

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