Also, a lot of this obviously has come up in my discussions with Tom. So I'm not going to comment on everything you wrote and will focus more on the parts that haven't come up elsewhere yet. I'll just repeat on the main point that I don't find it credible at all, absent solid evidence, that the joint US and EU policy on getting Shokin removed was all just because of Joe Biden's personal insistence on that point. Whether he boasted about that (despite having made the threats several months before it actually happened; at least Christine Lagarde's pushing on the same point happened only one month before) or not.

Do you have any facts about other aid being withheld in such a way, by Trump or his predecessors, or are you just assuming? If you do, well, I suppose the GAO would find that to have been illegal as well. As to the other points: he implied it during the call as per the transcript, it kept being implied by the officials involved in the weeks that followed, and was also stated literally. And you seem to be behind on the new evidence, because by now it's been shown that Ukraine did know.

As for Schiff lying about it: please, please tell me you have an actual point here (if so, what did he lie about?) and you're not just repeating Trump's imbecile whining about Schiff's misguided attempt at being funny with his Trump-as-mafioso shtick.

The Democrats doing their work for them - I agree to some extent, yes. Unlike probably many left-wing Americans, I do think Putin prefers the current heavily polarized and divided US over an alternative version in which the Democrats are largely accepting of Trump as president and consequently he can get more done.

But on the rest of it, are you serious? We're not talking about some bored Russian kids practicing their hacker arts for shits and giggles here, we're talking about the Kremlin deliberately orchestrating large-scale hacking, online propaganda and social media manipulation to exacerbate tensions and political polarization in both the US and various European countries. Setting aside for a minute the question of who they favoured or didn't favour to win the election, how on earth do you not have a problem with the rest of it?

Look, I'm not going to go into that whole debate now. Let's suppose I agree with you that that is outrageous; my point wasn't about Papadopoulos himself, but about the way conservatives seem to have focused so much attention and outrage on the Trump campaign getting caught up in the investigation, that they didn't have much left for the Russian manipulations themselves. Though I suppose depending on your reply to the previous paragraph, if you genuinely aren't bothered about what the Russians did, it helps explain why you'd be far more upset about the Papadopoulos thing.