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 in Ukraine and elsewhere overseas."

Nothing about President Trump's conduct in the relevant period supports the theory that he was motivated by a "deep-seated, genuine, and reasonable skepticism of Ukraine" for "pervasive corruption." He gave Ukraine hundreds of millions of dollars under a regime that ultimately lost power because of mounting concerns about corruption and then punitively withheld funds when a reformer came to power. He launched a general attack on anti-corruption programs while growing closer with Vladimir Putin and other corrupt despots. His Administration cut anti-corruption programs in Ukraine during the relevant period. And he ignored, defied, and confounded every office and agency within the Executive Branch seeking to promote anti-corruption programs, while demanding that Ukraine investigate his own domestic political rival. Even in the May 23 White House meeting with other U.S. officials, President Trump equated corruption in Ukraine with the false allegations that Ukraine tried to "take [him] down" in 2016, and directed his three senior U.S. government officials to assist "Mr. Giuliani's efforts, which, it would soon become clear, were exclusively for the benefit of the President's reelection campaign."

In short, there is overpowering evidence that President Trump acted with corrupt intent. The after-the-fact claim that he asked for foreign investigations of his political rivals and withheld military aid because of a generalized concern about corruption defies all the evidence before us and common sense. The President's actions were unexplained and inexplicable, contradicted legal and factual findings reached by credible experts, and are indefensible given they involved soliciting a foreign power to open an investigation into an American citizen and rival political candidate.

ii.Burden Sharing

We next consider the second justification proposed in the Minority Report: that President Trump has "been vocal about his skepticism of U.S. foreign aid and the need for European allies to shoulder more of the financial burden for regional defense." This explanation is based largely on the fact that President Trump told President Zelensky on the July 25 call that European countries should be doing more to help Ukraine. But there is no evidence that this concern was the actual reason why he withheld a White House meeting, blocked the release of Congressionally approved military and security assistance, and requested the announcement of two investigations; in fact, the evidence available is inconsistent with that offered explanation.

To this day, President Trump has not explained why he withheld the valuable White House meeting. And until the whistleblower complaint was filed, there was no explanation for why President