I wasn't at all surprised when President Trump told Fox & Friends yesterday, ”I want a trial.” I’ve long believed that it could offer the perfect opportunity to turn over the boulder of the Deep State conspiracy to hobble his election and presidency and examine the creepy-crawlies that scramble in the light of day. As the undisputed champ of reality TV, he grasps the power of the medium and understands story arcs better than any of his foes.

One of many actions of the plotters that the Senate trial could probe is hinted at by the request Senators Grassley and Johnson just made to the Federal Archivist: Via the Epoch Times:

Johnson, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, and Grassley, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, asked Archivist David Ferraro to produce records so as to “better understand the nature of these meetings, including who attended and what was discussed,” in a letter sent on Thursday (pdf).

“According to recent reports, in January 2016 Ukrainian governmental officials and corruption investigators met with members of former President Obama’s National Security Council (NSC), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Department of State and Department of Justice (DOJ). Obama Administration officials also met with Alexandra Chalupa, a contractor for the DNC, who reportedly worked with Ukrainian officials to undermine the Trump campaign,” Grassley said in a news release.

Their letter, citing those reports, elaborated that in 2016, “some of Ukraine’s top corruption prosecutors and investigators [met] face to face with members of former President Obama’s National Security Council (NSC), FBI, State Department and Department of Justice (DOJ).”

Some of the meetings reportedly included Alexandra Chalupa, a contractor for the DNC. They said Chalupa, who is Ukrainian-American, has been accused of working with Ukrainian officials to undermine Trump’s 2016 campaign.

During the January 2016 meeting, the senators said that officials also brought up investigations into Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian gas firm that had hired Hunter Biden, who served as a board member.

The letter places focus on Andrii Telizhenko, a former official at the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington who has claimed to have witnessed alleged attempts between the DNC and the Ukrainian government.

“U.S. officials told the Ukrainians they would prefer that Kyiv drop the Burisma probe and allow the FBI to take it over,” he was quoted by the two senators as saying in their letter.

The senators are now requesting records about the five White House meetings listed in the letter and all records related to meetings between and among White House officials, Andrii Telizhenko, Nazar Kholodnytskyy, Oksana Shulyar, and Valeriy Chaly.

“Please provide these documents as soon as possible but no later than 5:00 p.m. on December 5, 2019,” the senators requested in the letter.

For more on why Chalupa is such a key figure, see Daniel John Sobieski’s article of a week ago, “Time to Subpoena Alexandra Chalupa.”

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