To Put It Simply

From the House Intelligence Committee's report on their investigation of 45*:

Like ol' Doc Maddow said: All you have to do is look at the heading at the top of each part of Section 1.

• The President’s Request for a Political Favor 
• The President Removed Anti-Corruption Champion Ambassador Yovanovitch 
• The President’s Hand-Picked Agents Began the Scheme 
• The President Froze Vital Military Assistance 
• The President Conditioned a White House Meeting on Investigations 
• The President’s Agents Pursued a “Drug Deal” 
• The President Pressed President Zelensky to Do a Political Favor 
• The President’s Representatives Ratcheted up Pressure on the Ukrainian President 
• Ukrainians Inquired about the President’s Hold on Security Assistance 
• The President’s Security Assistance Hold Became Public 
• The President’s Scheme Unraveled 
• The President’s Chief of Staff Confirmed Aid was Conditioned on Investigations

45* knew what he was doing was illegal. He made sure to couch everything he said on the July 25 phone call in the kind of coded language that clouds the meaning of the words for anyone outside looking in, while allowing the target listener to get the message loud and clear.

And it's no stretch at all to surmise that one of Rudy's errands in Kiyv was to pre-interpret what Zelensky would hear so there'd be no misunderstanding between the two men, while maintaining plausible deniability of a quid pro quo.

Repubs love to scramble the timeline and to fuzzy up the Ukrainian names, knowing we don't pay enough attention to keep any of it straight.

So they know they can float some bullshit like "POTUS was only trying to get a handle on the history of Ukrainian corruption blah blah blah" - and we won't notice (eg) when they say Biden wanted the Ukrainian AG fired because he was investigating Hunter's bogus involvement in Barisma, when the truth is that the crooked AG was fired and that meant a new (more honest) guy came in to vet and investigate Barisma, and the new guy cleared the deal.

There's still a potential problem with Hunter Biden and how maybe his seat on the board constituted a conflict, but remember, Obama's ethics guys were voracious about making sure there was as little problem as possible. 8 years - no real scandals - no indictments - no pleas - no prison time.

Anyway, to make it even simpler: