Donald Trump didn't want to end corruption during the Ukraine call. He doesn't care about corruption , just as long as he benefits from contributing to it.!

Echo editorial opinion from the The Denver Post in Colorado.

Editorial: Trump’s unethical push for a Ukrainian investigation into his political rival must be condemned

Donald Trump, acting as potus, should not be pressuring a foreign leader to investigate one of his 2020, political rivals. Such unethical behavior undermines American foreign policy efforts and jeopardizes the integrity of our elections.

That is a point, upon which, we would hope members of both political parties in the United States could agree.

Every member of the U.S. Senate — including Colorado’s Republican Senator Cory Gardner who called reports of Trump’s actions “concerning”— voted to support the release of a full whistleblower complaint. They, like us, think the accusation that Trump abused the power of his office for political gain is something that should be taken seriously and investigated thoroughly.

Other Republicans, including members of Colorado’s congressional delegation, have sprung to Trump’s defense, arguing the president was only trying to root out corruption (!- to Maine Writer, this "corruption" concept is an oxymoron when it applies to Donald Trump. Where are his hidden tax returns?) in Ukraine and get to the bottom of unsubstantiated rumors that the country was involved in the 2016, hacking of the Democratic Party’s servers. 

After having read the summary transcript of a July phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, we don’t think that’s an accurate description of the exchange.

“The democrats and the media, frankly, have attacked this president to such an extent that it has caused a certain callousness in the public and a certain cynicism in public towards revelations,” Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colorado, told the Denver Post editorial board on Thursday. “I don’t think this rises to an impeachable offense. I don’t think this is necessarily even wrong. Could it have been handled better? Sure, but it is not something that I think is suggesting that this president is trying to interfere in an ongoing criminal investigation or is trying to affect the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.” (Maine Writer- This is the classic apologist point of view!)

Senator Cory Gardner

Buck signed on to an op-ed with other members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee defending Trump. Colorado Reps. Doug Lamborn and Scott Tipton also said they haven’t seen any evidence that the president did anything wrong.

To be clear, we’re not saying definitively that Trump has committed an impeachable offense; there’s an official process that will consider whether the whistleblower complaint is substantiated and if it rises to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” 

But, what we are saying is that we expect (a lot!) more of our president than the conversation he had with Zelensky. It was wrong. Viewed collectively with Trump’s order to freeze hundreds of millions of dollars in aid for Ukraine’s war against Russia days before the phone call, it raises a specter of impropriety that goes beyond mere trifling matters. 

There is also the fact that Trump’s private attorney Rudy Giuliani was having conversations with Zelensky’s staff outside of the Trump administration.

As the U.S. tries to promote a free and open democracy in Ukraine and support the country’s stand against the Russian annexation of Crimea, Trump made clear to Zelensky that his top priorities were, in fact, personal.

According to a not-verbatim transcript produced by intelligence officials who routinely listen to the phone calls presidents have with foreign officials, Trump asked Zelensky for a “favor:” investigate Crowdstrike, an American company that the New York Times reported helped make the forensic determination that it was Russian officials who hacked the Democratic National Committees servers in 2016 and released a trove of emails that were damaging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Then Trump said something along these lines: “The other thing, There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me.”

This was not Trump asking Zelensky to root out corruption in his country. This was Trump asking Zelensky to investigate the frontrunning Democrat in the presidential primary.

Biden had taken a leading role in Ukraine in 2015. However, at the same time, his son Hunter Biden was sitting on the board of one of the largest companies in Ukraine. The United Kingdom had frozen millions of dollars in assets from the company, but the head prosecutor in Ukraine refused to hand over documentation that could have assisted in the investigation. No charges were brought and the assets were unfrozen.

Biden has bragged about how he used foreign aid to pressure the government to fire that prosecutor and bring in another who would be less friendly to corruption. That certainly sounds like Biden was on the right side, but we also think it’s clear given that Biden should have forced his son to leave the board or recused himself from the foreign policy efforts in Ukraine. However, there’s no equivalent to that impropriety and Trump’s blatant self-serving requests.

Whether or not Trump is impeached and whether or not he wins in 2020, Congress must say loud and clear — including Colorado’s congressional members — that his efforts to entangle foreign countries in our election will not be tolerated. The Americans and the world deserve better from the president of the United States.

All the evidence the Republicans need is written in the reconstructed White House transcript

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-transcript-read-ukraine-president-phone-call-transcript-pdf-released-today-joe-biden-crowdstrike-2019-09-25/

"...the Trump call with Zelensky took place a day after Robert Mueller testified before Congress about the Russia investigation and about whether Mr. Trump had obstructed justice..."

Speaker of the House Nancy D'Alesandro Pelosi

Read the White House transcript:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-transcript-read-ukraine-president-phone-call-transcript-pdf-released-today-joe-biden-crowdstrike-2019-09-25/

Trump left Speaker Pelosi no option but impeachment inquiry
Revelations about the president pressuring a foreign government to investigate a political rival crossed a line.

An editorial echo published in The Mercury News, a California newspaper:

Donald Trump’s behavior left House Speaker Nancy Pelosi no choice but to open the fourth impeachment inquiry in the nation’s history.

Congress and the country cannot ignore actions by Trump that have come to light in the past two weeks. They cannot ignore White House stonewalling that eased only after Pelosi on Tuesday announced the formal investigation.

Pelosi had for months resisted calls for an impeachment inquiry. But for Pelosi, and for us, the latest revelations about Trump’s pressuring of a foreign government to investigate his political rival crossed a line, making it essential that the House launch a formal impeachment inquiry.

As Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky requested U.S. assistance to help fend off Russian aggression, Trump replied by pressing for a foreign investigation of unsubstantiated allegations about former Vice President Joe Biden. It’s all there in the reconstructed transcript, released Wednesday, of the July 25 conversation between the two men.

Trump and his allies claim that the president never expressed a clear quid pro quo in his conversation with Zelensky. But Trump didn’t need to explicitly say what was obvious — that Ukraine needs our nation’s support and protection if it has any hope of survival.

What Trump didn’t tell Zelensky was that he was blocking $391 million of security assistance for the country. But, according to the intelligence officer who blew the whistle on Trump’s action, Ukrainian leaders understood that they needed to show willingness to “play ball” before Trump would even talk to Zelensky.

Has Trump gone too far? Has he committed an impeachable offense? Do his actions constitute “high crimes and misdemeanors”? Ultimately that’s a question the House of Representatives must decide as it determines whether to impeach him – and for the Senate to determine if it tries him.

Before they and the nation try to answer that question, the president’s actions must be thoroughly investigated.

Unfortunately, the Trump administration has repeatedly resisted attempts by members of Congress to carry out their oversight responsibilities. In this case, until the impeachment inquiry was formally launched, the White House had balked at releasing the reconstructed transcript and the whistle-blower letter.

The president’s behavior is, as U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, put it, “deeply troubling.” It must be investigated.

After more than two years of national discussion about protecting our elections from foreign influence, the president – personally – solicited outside interference.