Wasn't Trump Impeached Over a Call? Biden Coerced Afghan Pres to Lie About Taliban Winning in Leaked Call: Report
By Taylor Penley
September 1, 2021 at 11:10am
Remember when House Democrats accused former President Donald Trump of pressuring Ukraine to investigate then-candidate Joe Biden while leveraging military aid as collateral during a phone call with Ukraine’s president in 2019?
I do. The accusation prompted Trump’s first impeachment on the grounds of “abuse of power” and “obstruction of Congress” that December, according to the U.S. Sun.
Now, two years later, it’s President Joe Biden who’s responsible for talks with world leaders, talks like the one House Democrats used to attack Trump.
And, to afford Biden similar scrutiny to what Trump received, one particular aspect of Biden’s last call with now-former Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani seems especially interesting.
Biden’s final call with Ghani came on July 23 — three weeks before Kabul fell to Taliban forces and Islamic extremism toppled 20 years of democratic progress in the country.
The two discussed “military aid, political strategy and messaging” for approximately 14 minutes, Reuters reported on Tuesday after reviewing what it said was a transcript and audio of the exchange provided by an anonymous source.
One particular aspect of the leaked transcript appears especially damning for Biden, as the New York Post pointed out.
The Post noted the transcript shows Biden “pressured” Ghani to “‘create the perception’ that the Taliban weren’t winning, ‘whether it is true or not.'”
“I need not tell you the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things are not going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban,” Biden said during the call, according to Reuters.
“And there is a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.”
Biden’s pressuring went a step further, however, according to Reuters.
If Ghani could successfully fool the public into thinking the Afghan government had plans to control what Reuters called the “spiraling situation” of the Taliban’s resurgence, Biden would offer aid.
“We will continue to provide close air support, if we know what the plan is,” Biden said, according to Reuters.
The outlet added that, just days before the call, the U.S. supported Afghan security forces with air strikes against the Taliban.
The Taliban maintained that these air strikes violated the Doha peace agreement signed under the Trump administration.
To provide some context, the Taliban had already advanced into approximately half of Afghanistan’s district centers at the time of the phone call, the Post noted.
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