Abuse of power

United States President Donald Trump has been employing various schemes to respond to his looming impeachment.

Last week, a whistleblower came forward and revealed that Mr. Trump called the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, asking him to look into the activities of former Vice President Joe Biden while hinting at withholding precious aid. Biden is one of the frontrunners or the Democratic Party to go against Trump’s reelection bid next year.

The whistleblower, a CIA official detailed to the National Security Council, said he was told by several members of the White House staff that they were disturbed about what had transpired in the July 25 phone call. Worse, there were efforts to expunge records of this call from the White House server, likely after a realization of what had been said.

Trump—through his Twitter account, of course—lashed out at this whistleblower and demanded to know his identity.

In a ploy many call “normalization,” the US president now seems to relish talking about his alleged offense with regard to Ukraine, and even added he was calling on China to do the same about Biden, trying to make it look like there was nothing wrong with what he was doing. Otherwise, how can he so openly talk about it?

And now a second whistleblower, an intelligence official with a far greater knowledge of having a supposedly more direct knowledge of what the President did, has emerged. Expect attacks on this second whistleblower soon—if they have not started already.

Mr. Trump and his allies can use any other tactic to mar the credibility of the charges against him. In the end, it all boils down to one thing—whether or not he abused the awesome powers of his office to ensure personal gain.

This is also a fair and simple gauge in determining who exactly an official is serving, whatever theatrics they employ of however they try to muddle the issue through their convoluted speech.