Blizzard

For those of us who have been in blizzard conditions, there's a phenomenon called a "white out." This occurs when there's so much snow and so much wind that visibility goes to zero. The world looks white—you can't see a thing at any distance from your face.

Part of the Democrat strategy in their impeachment coup attempt is to create a white out. They introduce a snow storm of unrelated and often inaccurate or misleading information. They then have their trained hamsters in the media create blizzard with a never-ending high velocity verbal wind that whips this bad information into a blizzard. It's effective—until the wind dies for just a moment and you get enough visibility to understand that there's nothing of substance beyond the white out. It's a sham.

Kim Strassel has a way of looking through the snow that has distinguished her during these chaotic times. She writes:

In the two weeks since the White House released the transcript of President Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the debate has descended into the weeds of process and people. This is unsurprising given House Democrats’ decision to keep hidden the central doings of their impeachment inquiry, and the media’s need to fill a void.

The press has responded by seeking to weave dozens of obscure Ukrainian and U.S. names into a crazy quilt of corruption. Readers have no time to keep track of all the Vlads, envoys and meetings in Spain, and that’s the point. The goal is to cover the Trump administration in ugly ...

It alleged, for instance, that Mr. Trump asked Ukraine to “locate and turn over servers.” He didn’t. It claims Mr. Trump “praised” a prosecutor named Yuriy Lutsenko and suggested the Ukrainian president “keep him in his position.” That didn’t happen either. There’s more, and when the whistleblower can’t get the facts of the call right, it’s no surprise he got his conclusion wrong too.

There is simply no evidence of what House Democrats have made the central claim of their impeachment inquiry: that Mr. Trump engaged in a “quid pro quo” by withholding aid to Ukraine unless it “opened an investigation” into former Vice President Joe Biden.

We now have the transcript of the call, in which Mr. Trump never threatened to withhold aid as a condition of an investigation. He doesn’t even mention money. The press is trying to suggest the threat was “implicit”—which means he didn’t say it.

There’s also the belated and devastating fact that the Ukrainians say they had no knowledge the aid was being withheld until a month after the call. How can you demand a quo when the target is unaware of the quid? Further, the aid was released—despite no “investigation” or “dirt” from Ukraine. And Mr. Zelensky has twice said there was no “pressure” or “blackmail” from the U.S. with regard to an investigation.

We also now have the opening statement of Kurt Volker, the former special representative to Ukraine, from his testimony last week to the House Intelligence Committee. “As you will see from the extensive text messages I am providing,” Mr. Volker said, “Vice President Biden was never a topic of discussion” during negotiations with Kyiv. He also testified he did not discuss the withholding of aid with his Ukrainian counterparts until “late August.” This is second confirmation of the Ukrainians’ statement that they had no clue during the July phone call there was any risk to aid.

Then there are the text messages. Democrats have highlighted several in which a State Department diplomat frets that aid is being withheld for political reasons. They neglect to point out that the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, shut down that claim in his own text: “You are incorrect. . . . The President has been crystal clear no quid pro quo’s of any kind.”

The wind from current impeachment "blizzard" warps facts and twists them into lies, creating drifts of unfounded and unsubstantiated accusations. As a consequence, it closes any road that might lead to a government getting things done for the benefit of its citizens.