The orange administration was/is basically filled with business people and generals.

What this story sounds like to me is that these folks were acting like business people. They wanted certain actions taken in order to help reduce the risk for any investment they made in Ukraine. That included replacing the board because of the commonly known corruption found throughout the country and specifically in this industry. Again, very reasonable.

The problem becomes when you have US government officials in the room participating. These officials (some of them like Sondland) are also industry types. So I can see how they might think this sort of things is fine. The career diplomats know that this is not fine. That the US government should not be performing the role of the Ukranian government. Perry knows better. Just because he knows people, does not mean he should be recommending them because of the obvious potential for conflict of interest. He is NOT that naive. We know that some diplomats were also forthright in voicing complaints.

Perhaps the distrust of government (deep state) caused these folks to prioritize business interests over what they saw as meaningless ethical concerns. After all, as Perry said, ANYONE would recommend Bleyzer. This part of the story would then become another example of folks thinking following ethical standards and policies only apply when you are trying to do something "wrong" not when you are trying to help. Down the slippery slope you go.

Now another problem is the sorts of people that were getting involved. There is simply no way that the US administration officials involved were not aware of the types of characters (mobsters) that were involved. Yet they continued. This part is much harder to understand unless there was something quite wrong going on.

Finally, there is the act of asking investigation into a political rival. Indefensible under any circumstances. Requesting foreign involvement in our election process should be a non-starter. In my opinion, all responsible (aware) parties should be thrown out. That isn't a slippery slope that is throwing a hand grenade onto a snowy slope while knowing the American political process is on the slopes below.