Ultimate, that does not matter.
There is one, simple question: did Trump corruptly use government business for his own personal gain and political advantage? A large amount of evidence strongly says he did.
Neither Letsenko nor Giuliani could force Trump to do so. Sure, maybe they played him like the insecure, narcissistic fool he is. But the fact remains that he chose to act corruptly and he should be held accountable. Just like a person who takes a bribe doesn't get to pretend they did nothing wrong because they were offered it.
No, it really, really matters. What is the bribe in this scenario? If Trump is the one driving the situation, the idea is that he's trying to get a political hit job on Biden (before Biden even announced he was running, mind you), and was using US military aid to extort it out of Ukraine. But if the driving force is Lutsenko, what is the bribe? What did Lutsenko want? Let's look at his perspective.
In 2016, Ukraine was pressured (in part by Joe Biden) to remove it's prosecutor general Victor Shokin from office. Best I can tell, he probably deserved it, I don't believe they were specifically trying to protect Hunter Biden, though Hunter Biden was almost certainly involved in criminal enterprises over there, but for the purposes of this discussion I consider that irrelevant. This is how Yuriy Lutsenko got into office as prosecutor general, his predecessor was ousted by international pressure, including the US.
In late 2016,
Marie Yovanovich was appointed as the US ambassador to Ukraine, and by 2018 she had made a name for herself as a major voice against corruption in Ukraine, and she had her sights on Lutsenko. This was a very bad thing for Lutsenko, it was the same thing that happened in 2016 to the prosecutor general, except this time he was the target rather than the beneficiary. So began his efforts to oust her. He gets in contact with his buddy Lev Parnas who is also a close associate of Rudy Giuliani, and tells him to get her fired. Through Giuliani, Parnas gets an invite to dinner Trump was at, where Parnas tells him Yovanovich is working to undermine Trump, and Trump says to "Get rid of her. Get her out tomorrow." Notably, this was 2018. Efforts to manipulate Trump into firing Yovanovich began in 2018.
Trump did not instigate this, Trump was the mark. Biden's name wasn't even mentioned at this point, it was nearly a year later that Biden even became part of the discussion. Lutsenko went at this a bunch of ways. He got Parnas to say she was working against Trump, he had Giulliani tell Trump she was conspiring with the Democrats investigating Trump's associates, he claimed she had once presented him a "do not prosecute" list of Democratic Party allies, and when that video of Joe Biden started doing the rounds, Lutsenko tried to use that too. From Lev Parnas' private messages, we can see Lutsenko saying in March 2019 he wouldn't or couldn't speak about the Bidens unless Yovanovich was removed first. At this point, a year into this campaign against her, she was still in her position, Trump hadn't removed her. Even with the offer of trashing Joe Biden, Lutsenko could not get Trump to fire her.
But John Solomon could. Lutsenko was trying to effectively bribe Trump with public declarations to get rid of her. Solomon did the opposite, he just started publishing all this information about Democrats in Ukraine. He put it in the news, and Trump loves the news, and Trump loves being part of the news. They amplified the idea in the media that Yovanovich was torpedoing Trump's presidency, and that finally got him to recall her. Not a bribe, not a quid pro quo, but a public media circus is what did it. Not only did they not accept a quid pro quo from Lutsenko, 2 weeks after her recall was announced publicly, he made a public statement from his position as prosecutor general that there was no evidence the Bidens had done anything wrong. I will concede, it's fairly likely Lutsenko wouldn't have given that statement if Zelensky hadn't already announced he canning Lutsenko anyway. But Trump wasn't bribed into recalling her, he was convinced to do it. And with evidence she was being stalked by Lutsenko allies in April, it was likely for the best that she got the hell out of there.
That is the background of this, I know you've heard all of this before, I know you've seen the evidence from Parnas. It's one thing for you to still believe Trump did bad things here, that's reasonable enough, but your continued insistence that Trump mobilized Giuliani in Ukraine is really frustrating. A group of people, instigated by Lutsenko, spent an entire year convincing Trump that individuals in Ukraine were conspiring against him and working to protect and benefit Democrats in the US. And once these things started getting published in the news, Trump believed them. You try to maintain a version of events where Trump is trying to make Ukraine fabricate evidence for his benefit, but that's not what happened at all. Trump had been successfully convinced Ukraine was actively meddling in US elections to favor Democrats against him, so he paused the security assistance, and asked the incoming president of Ukraine (who genuinely has a lot in common with Trump) to look into things for him. I can respect the suggestion that's still not appropriate behavior by Trump, but not your repeated insistence that Trump instigated this. After seeing the texts from that summer suggesting Trump needed to be convinced, after seeing Parnas' communications trying to convince Trump over a year in advance, you still are treating Trump as a criminal ringleader.
Edit: and if there were suggestions that Ukraine were meddling to favor Trump, and Democrats put an aid package to them on hold, you wouldn't even blink, I guarantee it.
