In the House impeachment drama, Russia still plays big role

WASHINGTON — For all the talk about Ukraine in the House impeachment inquiry, there’s a character standing just off-stage with a dominant role in this tale of international intrigue: Russia.

In her testimony before the House impeachment panel last week, diplomat Marie Yovanovitch suggested that the president’s actions played into the hands of Vladimir Putin, whose government has backed separatists in a five-year-old war in eastern Ukraine. While Democrats say the request to investigate the Bidens represented a quid pro quo, Trump insists he was within his rights to ask the country to look into corruption. Democrats, trying to make their accusations more understandable, have now settled on framing the president’s actions as a matter of bribery, which, as Pelosi noted, is mentioned in the Constitution.

“In the blink of an eye, we're asked to simply forget about Democrats on this committee falsely claiming they had more than circumstantial evidence of collusion between President Trump and Russians,” Nunes said. Last month, Trump abruptly moved U.S. Special Forces from northern Syria at Turkey’s urging and as result created a security vacuum for Russia to fill.

The concerns about Moscow linger even after special counsel Robert Mueller’s nearly two-year investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election dogged Trump for much of his first term and led to the conviction of five campaign advisers or close associates of the president.

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