Sen. Paul: Need To Investigate Democrat Letter Threatening Ukraine Over Mueller-Trump Probe

(CNSNews.com) – Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said that a 2018 letter to Ukraine’s prosecutor general — written by three Democratic senators threatening Ukraine to “halt any efforts to impede cooperation” with Special Counsel Robert Muller’s investigation of President Trump – merits investigation.

The Democrats were doing the same thing they accuse Trump of doing, said Paul, interfering in Ukraine for political reasons and using foreign aid as a bargaining chip.

“I think what`s interesting about this is both sides seem to be doing the same thing,” said Sen. Paul on NBC’s Meet the Press on Oct. 13. “If anything is consistent here it`s that both parties are trying to involve themselves in Ukraine.

“So, for example, four senators, Democrats, wrote a letter to the Ukrainian government and said if you don`t keep investigating Trump, we may reconsider our bipartisan support for your aid,” said Paul.

The May 4, 2018 letter to Ukraine’s general prosecutor was sent by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). The letter states, “We are writing to express great concern about reports that your office has taken steps to impede cooperation with the investigation of United States Special Counsel Robert Mueller.”

“If these reports are true, we strongly encourage you to reverse course and halt any efforts to impede cooperation with this important investigation,” state the senators.

“This reported refusal to cooperate with the Mueller probe also sends a worrying signal – to the Ukrainian people as well as the international community – about your government’s commitment more broadly to support justice and the rule of law.”

The letter goes on to ask the general prosecutor if he has restricted cooperation with Mueller’s investigation of Trump; whether any Trump administration officials advised him not to cooperate with Mueller; and whether the Mueller probe was discussed between U.S. and Ukrainian officials in any way.

Simply, Democratic senators were advising a foreign government on how it should interact with an investigation of President Trump being run by a special counsel that was under the oversight of the Department of Justice.

As columnist Marc Thiessen wrote in the Washington Post on Sept. 24, “So, it’s okay for Democratic senators to encourage Ukraine to investigate Trump, but it’s not okay for the president to allegedly encourage Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden?”

Thiessen added that Joe Biden in 2016, as vice president,  “threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees to Ukraine if the government did not fire the country’s top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin.” Ukraine complied, Shokin was fired, within six hours of Biden’s threat.

Biden has publicly boasted about this threat to Ukraine on video.

Commenting further to NBC’s Chuck Todd, Sen. Paul said, “Both parties seem to be doing this, and that`s why I think ultimately the American people are going to say — they`re going to throw up their hands and say, well, Biden threatened the aid, you know, Menendez threatened the aid.”

Todd replied, asking whether two wrongs make a right. Paul said, “Well, what I would do, I wouldn`t give them any aid. I wouldn`t give them any aid, because we don`t have any money. We are borrowing that money from China to send it to Ukraine. So I disagree with trying to manipulate them in anyway.”

“I just wouldn`t give them the aid, period,” said the senator.  “I wouldn’t say you get the aid if you do X for me. I would say we don`t have the money. Let`s take care of stuff at home. Let`s build roads and bridges in America, not over there.”

Todd continually tried to claim that what the Democrats did was somehow different than what they have accused President Trump of doing – do what I say on this investigation or you don’t get foreign aid.

“Democratic senators did the same thing,” stressed Paul. “Here`s the thing,  if you are going to condemn Trump you need to condemn the Democrat senators. It shouldn`t just be one-sided.

“Everybody is going after President Trump, someone needs to actually, in an objective way, evaluate a letter from four Democrats that said to Ukraine, if you don`t keep investigating Trump, we will reconsider our bipartisan support for aid,” said Paul.

“That`s a threat,” he added. “And that’s the same kind of stuff they`re accusing Trump of, but nobody is talking about that, the Democrats are doing exactly the same thing.”