The Morning Dispatch: Mulvaney’s Mixed Message on Ukraine

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Thursday was an insane day on the Ukraine front. Before we dive in, a quick recap: House Democrats are currently in the thick of proceedings to impeach President Trump, asserting that he used U.S. foreign policy for his own political ends in dealings with Ukraine over the summer, particularly on a July 25 phone call with new Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

What Democrats initially alleged—and what we now know to be true—is that Trump heavily pressured Zelensky to make the country launch two criminal investigations related to his own former and future presidential campaigns: one into a hacked DNC email server that some right-wing conspiracy theorists believe was smuggled into Ukraine, and one into Joe Biden’s son Hunter, who did consulting work for the natural gas company Burisma in Ukraine during the late Obama years.