"Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told reporters Thursday his controversial July call with President Trump involved no bribe, blackmail or quid pro quo, as impeachment-minded Democrats claim.

"Zelensky spoke at a daylong event with media inside a Kiev food market, and said he believes the transcript released by the White House is accurate and that he knew the U.S. had withheld $400 million in military aid due to concerns about corruption and concern for American 'taxpayer money.' But the issue, he said, was never linked to Trump's desire that Kiev rekindle an investigation into an energy company with ties to former Vice President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden."

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"A newly unearthed document shows that Ukrainian officials had opened a new probe into the firm linked to Hunter Biden months before President Trump's phone call with that country's leader, Fox News contributor John Solomon reported late Tuesday.

"Solomon said Tuesday on 'Hannity' that the U.S. government knew Ukraine was planning to look again into activities at Burisma Holdings, an energy company that employed then-Vice President Joe Biden's son as a member of its board of directors, early this year. The report is noteworthy because President Trump has been accused by Democrats of threatening in July to withhold foreign aid to Ukraine unless its new president pursued an investigation into the company and the younger Biden's role there.

"'The U.S. government had open-source intelligence and was aware as early as February of 2019 that the Ukrainian government was planning to reopen the Burisma investigation,' he claimed. 'This is long before the president ever imagined having a call with President Zelensky,' he added, noting Petro Poroshenko was still Ukraine's president at that time. ...

"Solomon said the timeline of the alleged 'illicit funds' coincided in part with the time Hunter Biden held a place on the firm's board. The younger Biden was reportedly paid as much as $1 million per year for his time on the board, but Solomon said investigators in Ukraine filed a 15-page 'notice of suspicion' indicating they were 'looking at the possibility that the $3.4 million paid to Hunter Biden's firm may have been part of the illicit funds that were moving through the company.'"

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"The latest Census Bureau Current Population Survey data now show that middle-class incomes, after adjusting for inflation, have surged by $5,003 since Donald Trump became president in January 2017. Median household income has now reached $65,976 -- an all-time high and up more than 8 percent in 2019 dollars under the Trump presidency.

"This data was compiled by the statisticians at Sentier Research, an economic research group whose founders have more than 30 years of experience at the Census Bureau in analyzing the monthly income numbers. ...

"These income numbers are PRE-TAX, so they do NOT include the impact of the Trump tax cut. The Heritage Foundation estimates that the average household has saved $1,400 a year on their federal taxes from the 2017 Trump tax cut. This means many working-class families now have a $6,000 higher after-tax, and after-inflation paycheck today."

"Do the Democrats have a good-faith belief that President Trump has engaged in high crimes and misdemeanors, or are they engaged in a political stunt, the objectives of which are to appease irrational elements of their base and to batter Trump for 2020 election purposes?

"If they have a good-faith belief that the president's impeachment must be considered, they owe it to the country to vote on conducting an impeachment inquiry, rather than continue dodging accountability. Indeed, if Democrats really believe what they say -- if they really believe there have been appalling abuses of power, rather than mere missteps or political disputes -- then they should be proud to vote on it.

"Only the House can impeach the president. If there is to be an inquiry about invoking this most solemn and consequential of the House's powers, the House must vote to conduct it. It is not for the Speaker and her adjutants to decree that there is an inquiry. If the inquiry is to be legitimate, the House as a whole must decide to conduct it.

"Members of the House are the representatives of the sovereign -- the People. In November 2020, the People are scheduled to vote on whether Donald Trump should keep his job. If Democrats, who control the House, truly believe the president has committed impeachable offenses and is so unfit for his duties that we can't wait just 13 months for the sovereign to render that verdict, then they should vote to conduct an impeachment inquiry. If they are afraid to vote on it, then they shouldn't be doing it. And, as their committee chairmen are fond of saying, we should draw a negative inference against them."

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"There is no impeachment inquiry. There are no subpoenas.

"You are not to be faulted if you think a formal inquest is under way and that legal process has been issued. The misimpression is completely understandable if you have been taking in media coverage -- in particular, reporting on a haughty Sept. 27 letter from House Democrats, presuming to direct Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, on pain of citation for obstruction, to cooperate in their demands to depose State Department officials and review various records.

"The letter is signed by not one but three committee chairmen. Remember your elementary math, though: Zero is still zero even when multiplied by three.

"What is portrayed as an 'impeachment inquiry' is actually just a made-for-cable-TV political soap opera. The House of Representatives is not conducting a formal impeachment inquiry. To the contrary, congressional Democrats are conducting the 2020 political campaign."

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"With all of the breathless headlines of the last two weeks, it is astonishing that the entire city of Washington is not swooning from hypoxia. Much of the media have blasted out the news that Attorney General William Barr is 'implicated' in the Ukraine scandal, after sources said he pressed leaders in Australia, Italy and England to supply evidence about the origins of the Russia investigation. Esquire Magazine was a tad more descriptive, proclaiming Barr was now 'far up s--t creek' because of his calls.

"Yet not only is there a valid reason for such calls, but they could indicate that the creek could become a storm of sorts for Democrats over the coming weeks. The calls made by Barr were reportedly linked to the ongoing investigation by United States Attorney John Durham into the origins of the Russia investigation. It is not uncommon for an attorney general, or even a president, to ask foreign leaders to assist with ongoing investigations. Such calls can shortcut bureaucratic red tape, particularly if the evidence is held, as in this case, by national security or justice officials. A call to request assistance for the Durham investigation would 'implicate' Barr in nothing other than an official investigation. ...

"Even worse is there could be a one two punch coming on the Russia investigation. Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz is said to be close to releasing his report on the secret surveillance targeting Trump officials. The report is expected to be both comprehensive and damaging for many involved in the start of that investigation. Durham and Horowitz will not be easily dismissed. Both are widely respected and are working with career investigators. If either finds improper conduct, it could reinforce the position of Republicans and moderate Democrats in voting against the impeachment or removal of Trump, who strongly maintains that the Obama administration not only improperly targeted his campaign for investigation but proved lax in investigating allegations against Democrats ranging from Hillary Clinton to Joe Biden."

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"Another day, another scandal that's sure to trigger the Trump administration's downfall -- if only the American people would be less picky about what the definition of the word 'evidence' is.

"The Ukraine Call Transcript. The Whistleblower Complaint. The Impeachment Inquiry. The pieces of this latest impeachment jigsaw have reached mythic status, bolstered by frenzied reporting, and insistence on the part of Democrats and advocates that this time, they've got the president right where they want him.

"In reality, the documents offer very little in the form of an obvious smoking gun. Both the transcript and the complaint have become a cultural Rorschach test: no matter the evidence (or lack thereof) the reader will see exactly what they want to see. ...

"Fortunately, the American People have grown wearily accustomed to looking past the fakery and seeing these world-ending controversies for what they truly are: breathless revenge schemes orchestrated by a fallen political party."

"Impeachment does, or at least should, give rise to the most serious deliberations. This case does not come close to meeting that standard. Both the whistleblower complaint and the rough transcript of the phone call are in the public domain. The only correct verdict is that the whistleblower is reckless, if not outright dishonest, in putting forward this complaint. The political commentators are every bit as bad in drawing overwrought inferences by taking passages out of context or adding hostile inferences to innocuous texts. Worse, the quoted sentence from the whistleblower's letter reveals that his entire case relies on hearsay of multiple conversations to which he was not privy, so it is impossible to cross-examine either the whistleblower or any of his alleged sources. Sadly, reliance on this information led the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community to conclude that the report 'appears credible,' even though 'the ICIG's preliminary review identified some indicia of an arguable political bias on the part of the Complainant in favor of a rival political candidate.' No mention was made of who that candidate was, and what those indicia of bias included.

"Nonetheless, the Democrats are gearing up to impeach on double hearsay, even though the best evidence of what happened is the call itself, which does not contain a shred of evidence to support the inflammatory charge that Trump was pressuring Zelensky to 'dig up' dirt on Biden to improve the President's chances of reelection."

"Why is it that the House is controlled by Democrats, yet its leadership is not pushing through any of the policy proposals voiced so openly on the Democratic primary stage?

"Why aren't progressive representatives introducing bills to pay reparations to African Americans, to legalize infanticide in some cases of late-term abortion, to offer free medical care to illegal aliens, to confiscate AR-15s, to extend Medicare for all, to impose a wealth tax and raise top rates to between 70 and 90 percent, to abolish student debt and ensure free college for all, or to grant blanket amnesty to those currently living in the country illegally?

"Simple answer: none of those issues poll anywhere near 50 percent approval. And no Democratic candidate would expect to beat Trump as the emissary of such an agenda.

"If the economy was in a recession, if we were embroiled in another Iraq-like or Vietnam-sort of war, and if Trump's polls were below 40 percent, then the Democrats would just wait 13 months and defeat him at the polls.

"But without a viable agenda and because they doubt they can stop Trump's reelection bid, they feel they have no recourse but to impeach. If Trump were to be reelected, not a shred of Barack Obama's 'fundamental transformation' would be left, and the strict constructionist Supreme Court would haunt progressives for a quarter-century."

"Any president has a perfect right to tell a foreign head of state and recipient of major U.S. aid that his corruption-plagued country has played a destabilizing but still murky role in recent American elections and in scandals that have affected the American people, and in particular the current president of the United States -- and that it would be a good thing to get to the bottom of it."

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