Trump's best defense against impeachment

Michael Anton, author of "The Flight 93 Election," arguably one of the most influential essays written in the runup to the 2016 presidential election, has another important essay which will be published in the next edition of The Claremont Review of Books, titled "The Empire Strikes Back." (If you're interested in the cutting edge of conservative thought, I highly recommend a subscription to this quarterly journal.)

If you're not up to reading the whole thing—it is a bit long—I'm here to help. Towards the end of the article is a solid, common-sense rationale for why, even if you stipulate that Trump did indeed withhold funds from Ukraine in an attempt to force them to investigate Burisma and Biden, that was far from being an impeachable offense. Here is the relevant excerpt:

The worst charge thus far alleged against President Trump is that he attempted to make $400 million in aid to Ukraine contingent on that country’s government investigating possible corruption by the Bidens. This is the much hoped for “smoking gun,” the “quid pro quo”—as if the foreign policy of any country in history has ever been borne aloft on the gentle vapors of pure altruism. 

… would that be sufficient to convince a majority of Americans, and a supermajority of senators, that Trump should be removed from office? 

I don’t see it. Especially since a) no aid was actually withheld; b) no investigation was actually launched; c) the American people don’t care about Ukraine and would probably prefer to get their $400 million back; and d) they would inevitably ask: so were, in fact, Joe Biden and his son on the take from a foreign government? And if it looks like they might have been, why, exactly, was it improper for the president to ask about it? 

Trump’s enemies’ answer to the last question is: because the president was asking a foreign government to investigate a political opponent for purely personal gain. Really? Is potential corruption by a former vice president—and potential future president—and his family a purely private matter, of no conceivable import or interest to the public affairs of the United States? That’s what you have to insist on to maintain that the request was improper. That’s the line we can expect the Democrat-CLM axis to flog, shamelessly and aggressively. But will a majority of Americans buy it? Especially since career officials at the Department of Justice already determined, and anti-Trump witnesses appearing before Representative Adam Schiff’s secret star chamber reluctantly conceded, that nothing Trump did or is alleged to have done was technically, you know, illegal.

I ask that any comments be focused not on Trump's myriad character flaws and tweets, but on the question of whether what he has done in Ukraine rises to the level of an impeachable offense.