Impeachment Inquiry 2: Now It's Official!

[GreyhoundFan]

"With revised testimony, Sondland ties Trump to quid pro quo"

Spoiler

In a significant revision to his earlier testimony before House impeachment investigators, U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland now says he told a Ukrainian official that security assistance to the country would only resume if the authorities in Kyiv opened investigations requested by President Trump and potentially damaging to former vice president Joe Biden.

Sondland’s “supplemental declaration,” provided to the House impeachment inquiry, offered further evidence of an effort directed by Trump and his personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, to tie nearly $400 million in security assistance to investigations that could politically benefit the president.

Sondland, a Trump donor-turned-diplomat, had been seen as a loyalist of the president with a supportive version of events. His earlier assertion in a text message to a senior State Department official that Trump didn’t seek a “quid pro quo” of security assistance in return for investigations had been seized upon by Republicans to argue that the president had not used the power of his office for personal political gain.

With his revised statement, Sondland is now telling a story that comports with statements from other senior national security officials that the president did try to use U.S. funds to direct actions by Ukraine that could damage a potential opponent in the 2020 election.

Sondland told lawmakers in closed-door testimony on Oct. 17 that he knew Giuliani was demanding one quid pro quo – that Ukraine announce corruption investigations, including into an energy company, Burisma, where Joe Biden’s son Hunter held a board seat, in exchange for an Oval Office meeting between Trump and Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky.

But in an opening statement circulated at the time, Sondland said he had no knowledge of whether the White House was also holding up of security assistance to press for the investigations.

The following week, William B. Taylor Jr., the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, challenged Sondland’s claim that he did not know of a second quid pro quo involving the security aid. Taylor testified that Sondland had conditioned the release of the funding on the investigations targeting Biden in a meeting with Ukrainian officials in Poland in September.

Taylor said he understood that on Sept. 1, Sondland warned Zelensky aide Andrey Yermak that the security assistance “would not come” unless the new Ukrainian president committed to pursuing the investigation into Burisma.

“I was alarmed,” Taylor wrote, saying a national security official had told him the demand was relayed in person by Sondland while the ambassador was traveling in Poland with Vice President Pence. “This was the first time I had heard that the security assistance . . . was conditioned on the investigation.”

In his new addition to his earlier testimony, Sondland stated that “by the beginning of September 2019, and in the absence of any credible explanation for the suspension of aid, I presumed that the aid suspension had become linked” to Ukraine having not yet committed publicly to the investigation of Burisma and another into a discredited theory about Ukrainian involvement in the 2016 U.S. election.

“It would have been natural for me to have voiced what I had presumed,” Sondland said, acknowledging that he told one of Zelensky’s advisors in Warsaw that “resumption” of U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anti-corruption statement that the officials had been discussing.

Following the first revelations of such an exchange in Taylor’s testimony, Sondland’s attorney Robert Luskin wrote to The Washington Post on Oct. 23, saying that his client “does not recall” such a conversation.

Sondland also described an exchange he had with Trump, in which he described the president as “in a very bad mood” as Sondland sought to understand what the president hoped to achieve by pressing Ukraine on investigations.

The call took place moments after Taylor raised sharp concerns in a text message with Sondland about a possible illicit quid pro quo regarding aid to Ukraine.

Taylor texted Sondland and fellow State Department official Kurt Volker on Sept. 9: “I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.” That prompted Sondland to phone Trump.

Sondland described the context of the call: “There were all kinds of rumors. And I know in my few previous conversations with the President, he’s not big on small talk, so I would have one shot to ask him. And rather than asking him, ‘Are you doing X because of X or because of Y or because of Z?’ I asked him one open-ended question: What do you want from Ukraine?”

The two had a “very quick conversation,” Sondland said.

The president replied, “I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo. I want Zelensky to do the right thing,’” according to Sondland’s account.

“And I said: ‘What does that mean?’ And he said: ‘I want him to do what he ran on.’ And that was the end of the conversation. I wouldn’t say he hung up me, but it was almost like he hung up on me,” Sondland said.

About five hours after Taylor’s text, Sondland wrote back to Taylor: “The President has been crystal clear no quid pro quo’s of any kind” and recommending he reach out to more senior State Department officials.

“I had gotten as far as I could,” Sondland told House investigators. “I had asked the boss what he wanted. He wouldn’t tell me, other than: I want nothing.”

Republican counsel Steve Castor asked Sondland if Trump told him to write the “no quid pro quo’s” text. “The President didn’t know I was sending a text,” he said, “because he didn’t know that the question came from Ambassador Taylor.”

Read the supplemental declaration here.

[fraurosena]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"With revised testimony, Sondland ties Trump to quid pro quo"

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In a significant revision to his earlier testimony before House impeachment investigators, U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland now says he told a Ukrainian official that security assistance to the country would only resume if the authorities in Kyiv opened investigations requested by President Trump and potentially damaging to former vice president Joe Biden.

Sondland’s “supplemental declaration,” provided to the House impeachment inquiry, offered further evidence of an effort directed by Trump and his personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, to tie nearly $400 million in security assistance to investigations that could politically benefit the president.

Sondland, a Trump donor-turned-diplomat, had been seen as a loyalist of the president with a supportive version of events. His earlier assertion in a text message to a senior State Department official that Trump didn’t seek a “quid pro quo” of security assistance in return for investigations had been seized upon by Republicans to argue that the president had not used the power of his office for personal political gain.

With his revised statement, Sondland is now telling a story that comports with statements from other senior national security officials that the president did try to use U.S. funds to direct actions by Ukraine that could damage a potential opponent in the 2020 election.

Sondland told lawmakers in closed-door testimony on Oct. 17 that he knew Giuliani was demanding one quid pro quo – that Ukraine announce corruption investigations, including into an energy company, Burisma, where Joe Biden’s son Hunter held a board seat, in exchange for an Oval Office meeting between Trump and Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky.

But in an opening statement circulated at the time, Sondland said he had no knowledge of whether the White House was also holding up of security assistance to press for the investigations.

The following week, William B. Taylor Jr., the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, challenged Sondland’s claim that he did not know of a second quid pro quo involving the security aid. Taylor testified that Sondland had conditioned the release of the funding on the investigations targeting Biden in a meeting with Ukrainian officials in Poland in September.

Taylor said he understood that on Sept. 1, Sondland warned Zelensky aide Andrey Yermak that the security assistance “would not come” unless the new Ukrainian president committed to pursuing the investigation into Burisma.

“I was alarmed,” Taylor wrote, saying a national security official had told him the demand was relayed in person by Sondland while the ambassador was traveling in Poland with Vice President Pence. “This was the first time I had heard that the security assistance . . . was conditioned on the investigation.”

In his new addition to his earlier testimony, Sondland stated that “by the beginning of September 2019, and in the absence of any credible explanation for the suspension of aid, I presumed that the aid suspension had become linked” to Ukraine having not yet committed publicly to the investigation of Burisma and another into a discredited theory about Ukrainian involvement in the 2016 U.S. election.

“It would have been natural for me to have voiced what I had presumed,” Sondland said, acknowledging that he told one of Zelensky’s advisors in Warsaw that “resumption” of U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anti-corruption statement that the officials had been discussing.

Following the first revelations of such an exchange in Taylor’s testimony, Sondland’s attorney Robert Luskin wrote to The Washington Post on Oct. 23, saying that his client “does not recall” such a conversation.

Sondland also described an exchange he had with Trump, in which he described the president as “in a very bad mood” as Sondland sought to understand what the president hoped to achieve by pressing Ukraine on investigations.

The call took place moments after Taylor raised sharp concerns in a text message with Sondland about a possible illicit quid pro quo regarding aid to Ukraine.

Taylor texted Sondland and fellow State Department official Kurt Volker on Sept. 9: “I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.” That prompted Sondland to phone Trump.

Sondland described the context of the call: “There were all kinds of rumors. And I know in my few previous conversations with the President, he’s not big on small talk, so I would have one shot to ask him. And rather than asking him, ‘Are you doing X because of X or because of Y or because of Z?’ I asked him one open-ended question: What do you want from Ukraine?”

The two had a “very quick conversation,” Sondland said.

The president replied, “I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo. I want Zelensky to do the right thing,’” according to Sondland’s account.

“And I said: ‘What does that mean?’ And he said: ‘I want him to do what he ran on.’ And that was the end of the conversation. I wouldn’t say he hung up me, but it was almost like he hung up on me,” Sondland said.

About five hours after Taylor’s text, Sondland wrote back to Taylor: “The President has been crystal clear no quid pro quo’s of any kind” and recommending he reach out to more senior State Department officials.

“I had gotten as far as I could,” Sondland told House investigators. “I had asked the boss what he wanted. He wouldn’t tell me, other than: I want nothing.”

Republican counsel Steve Castor asked Sondland if Trump told him to write the “no quid pro quo’s” text. “The President didn’t know I was sending a text,” he said, “because he didn’t know that the question came from Ambassador Taylor.”

Read the supplemental declaration here.

Sondland is so obviously trying to save his own ass. He knows the game is up, and he’s afraid his lies to the inquiry will come back to bite him, so he’s attempting to recant his testimony without recanting it. The other’s testimonies ‘refreshed my memory’ argument isn’t quite cutting it though.
 

And the arrogance to sign that statement as ‘the honorable’ Gordon Sondland!

Even if that is the way you are officially addressed in your ambassadorial capacity, it’s not how you should refer to yourself.

In this case, calling yourself honorable is the epitome of irony.

[fraurosena]

Honorable, right?

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Oh FFS, "but the Bidens" is the 2019 version of "but her emails": "Senate Republicans consider including Bidens in Trump impeachment trial"

Spoiler

Senate Republicans are privately debating whether they should use an impeachment trial of President Trump to scrutinize former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter as some Trump allies push to call them as witnesses while others dismiss the suggestion as a risky political ploy.

The ongoing discussions are a revealing glimpse into the fault lines in the GOP ahead of a possible trial of Trump in the upper chamber, where there are varying appetites among Senate Republicans for the type of political combat relished by the president and his most hardcore defenders.

Among a group of Trump’s allies inside and outside Congress, there is intense and growing interest in countering the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry with their own scrutiny of Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings in Ukraine and China. Because his father was vice president at the time, these allies believe it could be a way of explaining why Trump pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a July 25 phone call to “look into” the Bidens, who have denied any wrongdoing.

That effort gained steam on Capitol Hill last week at a private lunch where Republican Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.) and John N. Kennedy (La.) raised the idea of summoning Hunter Biden, according to two people familiar with the exchange who, like others in this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Paul took his private push public at a campaign rally with the president Monday night in Kentucky.

“I say this to my fellow colleagues in Congress, to every Republican in Washington: step up and subpoena Hunter Biden and subpoena the whistleblower!” Paul told the crowd, also referring to the unnamed intelligence official who first raised alarms about the president’s Ukraine conduct.

Yet many Senate Republicans have reservations about such a strategy, fearing it would look overtly political and that it may not be appropriate, or even possible, to include such witnesses in an impeachment trial.

“I think that’s a sideshow,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) said of calling in Hunter Biden. “[Impeachment] is a very solemn and serious constitutional process, and I just think that whatever the House decides to vote on . . . that’s what we ought to consider and not make this any more of a reality show than it’s likely to become.”

The back-and-forth sets up a looming clash between Trump loyalists and more traditional-minded Senate Republicans who are uncomfortable with Trump’s no-holds-barred tactics in defending himself. Many Senate Republicans, for example, also have little interest in outing the whistleblower, even as the president and his allies have argued the person should be named and targeted with a subpoena.

But Paul’s position on the Bidens has been echoed by Trump’s loyalists in the conservative media, ramping up the pressure campaign on Senate Republicans to be more aggressive in defending the president.

“The Bidens have to be called,” former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon said Sunday on Fox News. “Joe Biden is a hand grenade and Hunter Biden is the pin. And when that pin gets pulled, the shrapnel is going to blow back all over the Democratic establishment,”

At the center of the deliberations is Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Although he’s a staunch Trump ally, Graham has been criticized by some of the president’s supporters for not doing more to protect him.

Some Trump supporters, for example, advocate having Graham do his own investigation of Hunter Biden in front of the judiciary panel — including hauling in State Department officials who found Biden’s dealings inappropriate.

“I’ve seen a lot of conservatives starting to get kind of frustrated with Lindsey O. Graham because he goes on TV and says a lot of stuff but then . . . nothing ever goes anywhere,” said one Republican campaign operative close with Trump allies. “Republicans control half of Congress — and I think that they should act like it.”

In an interview Tuesday, Graham said he had not thought about the idea of calling either of the Bidens as witnesses in Senate trial, but he said he was ruling out his own committee as a venue.

“I don’t have jurisdiction over Hunter and Joe Biden, so we’re not going to call them at the Judiciary Committee,” Graham said, adding later: “That’s just not proper. I don’t have jurisdiction and I’m an institutional guy.”

When told his position might disappoint some conservatives, Graham pointed to other committees, including the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, suggesting they might be able to conduct such an investigation.

“Let’s look and see what’s out there,” he said. “The first decision I want to do is not turn the whole country upside down.”

Graham said last month he would invite Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani to appear before his panel to testify about “corruption and other improprieties involving Ukraine” — a prospect that Senate Democrats said they would welcome.

On Tuesday, however, Graham said he did not expect Giuliani to appear. Other Republicans said privately that calling Giuliani would be a bad idea given his involvement with a campaign to leverage foreign policy promises on political favors.

“I think they will claim privilege,” Graham said of Giuliani and the White House. “The question for them becomes, ‘Will that privilege stick?’ ”

Meanwhile, House Republicans have been using their time in the impeachment investigation to try to unearth new information that would cast the Bidens in an unfavorable light. Under GOP questioning during a recent closed-door deposition, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent testified that he had worried that Hunter Biden’s position with the firm Burisma Holdings would complicate efforts by U.S. diplomats to convey to Ukrainian officials the importance of avoiding conflicts of interest, The Washington Post reported. Kent said he took his concerns to the vice president’s office but was told Joe Biden didn’t have the “bandwidth” to deal with additional family issues because his other son, Beau, was battling cancer.

“Obviously based on testimony that I’ve heard, Hunter Biden’s role in Ukraine issues is certainly well-known, but also I think he could help the Senate understand if there were some legitimate concerns that needed to be addressed, whether they related directly to him or corruption more broadly,” said Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a Trump ally who has been part of the impeachment depositions in the House. “I look at this more as a Ukrainian corruption issue than I do any particular individual.”

In a statement, Joe Biden campaign spokesman TJ Ducklo pointed to a newly released transcript of testimony from a former top Ukraine expert at State, Kurt Volker, who told lawmakers there was no truth to Trump’s allegations about Biden and Ukraine. Ducklo said, “It’s no surprise after today’s revelation . . . that some Republican senators might resist carrying the water of a president who is clearly spiraling and desperate to breathe new life into his pathetic lies.”

He added: “The sheer magnitude of Donald Trump’s misconduct becomes clearer each day, which is why Joe Biden believes Congress has no choice but to impeach him.”

If Republicans moved to call the Bidens during impeachment, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. would likely have the final word. Roberts would oversee a Senate trial and has the power to accept evidence, dismiss the case and direct the proceedings — although he could defer those decisions to senators for a vote or be overruled by them.

Some Senate Democrats scoffed at the notion that Republicans would follow through with the Biden gambit, calling it a distraction from the substance of the evidence being compiled in the House.

“There was a stage where we were supposedly going to have Giuliani up here, so you can’t get too overheated by any of these proposals,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). “They can’t defend what the president did, so they’re trying to change the subject.”

Some Republicans have been noncommittal about the prospect of going after the Bidens amid an impeachment trial. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a key possible swing vote in a potential trial, said Tuesday it would be “up to Lindsey Graham” on who should be called to his committee.

“I’m not going to get into that,” she said when asked about witnesses.

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said, “There has been a lot of attention to the Hunter Biden issue already,” adding he hasn’t “given much thought” to whether he or his father should be called as witnesses.

But others, like Paul and Kennedy, are ready to, as Trump told House Republicans recently, “take the gloves off.”

“It’s inevitable that when the trial comes to the Senate, one of the issues is going to be: ‘Did the president have a good faith reason to believe that Hunter Biden may have been involved in corruption?’ ” Kennedy said. “And if I’m correct in my analysis, then there will be a lot of time spent on what Mr. Biden did for the money.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump makes falsehoods central to impeachment defense as incriminating evidence mounts"

Spoiler

Standing before a crowd of supporters this week in Lexington, Ky., President Trump repeated a false claim he has made more than 100 times in the past six weeks: that a whistleblower from the intelligence community misrepresented a presidential phone call at the center of the impeachment inquiry that threatens his presidency.

“The whistleblower said lots of things that weren’t so good, folks. You’re going to find out,” Trump said Monday at a campaign rally. “These are very dishonest people.”

Behind him were men and women in “Read the Transcript” T-shirts — echoing through their apparel Trump’s attempt to recast an incriminating summary of his July 25 call with Ukraine’s president as a piece of exonerating evidence.

It’s a form of gaslighting that has become the central defense strategy for the president as he faces his greatest political threat yet. But the approach is coming under increasing strain as congressional Democrats release transcripts and prepare to hold public hearings presenting evidence that directly undercuts Trump’s claims.

That the whistleblower report essentially mirrors the set of facts that have since been revealed by a stream of documented evidence and sworn testimony has not stopped Trump from repeatedly claiming otherwise. He has also pushed other specious arguments in his harried attempt to counter the growing evidence from witnesses implicating his administration in a quid pro quo scheme linking military aid to Ukrainian investigations targeting Democrats.

Without evidence, Trump has claimed that his own administration officials who have complied with congressional subpoenas are “Never Trumpers.” He has recounted conversations in which senators deemed him “innocent,” only to have the lawmakers deny making the statements. He has dismissed polls that show growing support for impeachment as “fake,” while repeatedly claiming levels of Republican support that exceed anything that exists in public polling.

“I don’t know whether he believes all these things or he takes pleasure in inventing false narratives, but I think the most important thing here is that no president can sustain his hold on the public for long when he loses his credibility,” said Robert Dallek, a presidential historian.

Trump’s repetitive use of false claims represents an attempt to immunize himself from impeachment by seeding favorable information in the minds of the public, even when that information is incorrect, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center.

“We know from work in social psychology that repeated exposure to a claim increases the likelihood that you think it’s accurate,” she said. “As you hear or read something repeatedly, you are more likely to think it’s accurate even if faced with evidence that it’s not.”

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

While Trump has made more than 13,000 false and misleading claims since he became president, his attempts to distort reality have crashed headlong into a fast-moving impeachment process that has secured damaging testimony from several Trump administration officials who have contradicted him under oath.

Since Democrats began their impeachment inquiry in September, Trump’s most consistent defense has been the false assertion that the whistleblower complaint “bears no resemblance” to his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump has referred to the whistleblower’s allegations as “false,” “fraudulent,” “wrong,” “incorrect,” “so bad,” “very inaccurate,” and “phony.”

But the whistleblower’s account — which documented how Trump pressed Zelensky to work with Attorney General William P. Barr and Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani to investigate former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter — has been corroborated by the reconstructed transcript released by the White House. Witness testimony has also backed up most of the whistleblower report’s main conclusions, including that White House lawyers sought to “lock down” records of the call by moving it onto a highly classified system.

In his repeated claims disputing the accuracy of the whistleblower’s account, Trump has only rarely gone into any detail to say what he considered inaccurate. Trump has misquoted the report each time he has attempted to provide evidence of the whistleblower’s alleged errors.

“The whistleblower said ‘quid pro quo’ eight times,” Trump said last month. “It was a little off — no times.”

The whistleblower report did not make any references to “quid pro quo,” let alone eight.

Trump’s willingness to repeatedly mislead the public represents an attempt to protect himself by creating doubt about the fundamental nature of truth, said Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee.

“One thing we’ve all noticed with Trump is he knows how to strategically create confusion,” he said. “To go on the record with a bold-faced lie, it doesn’t matter whether you fact-check him in real time, it doesn’t matter if there’s a human cry afterwards, his calculation is that there’s enough confusion that you don’t know what’s true and what isn’t.”

Trump has also sought to draw other Republicans into his truth-defying defenses, drawing rare pushback from lawmakers who disputed his accounts of their conversations.

Last month, Trump quoted conversations with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), claiming that both lawmakers deemed his conduct with Ukraine “innocent.”

“I read Mitch McConnell’s statement yesterday, and he read my phone call. And, as you know, he put out a statement that said that was the most innocent phone call he’s read,” Trump told reporters last month. “And I spoke to him about it, too. He read my phone call with the President of Ukraine. Mitch McConnell — he said, ‘That was the most innocent phone call that I’ve read.’ ”

McConnell never released such a statement, and when asked about Trump’s claim, said, “We’ve not had any conversations on that subject.” Asked if the president was lying, McConnell responded: “You’d have to ask him.”

Trump also claimed that Scott made a statement saying that “the president is innocent. Forget about due process. He’s innocent.”

Scott, when asked if he had said what Trump claimed he had, said “yeah, no,” disputing the claim that he did not care about due process. He did say, for the first time publicly, that he considered Trump “innocent of an impeachable offense.”

Trump’s defenders say his un­or­tho­dox style is what allowed him to connect with voters and win the presidency three years ago. Many dismiss hand-wringing over the accuracy of Trump’s statements as a sign of Washington’s disconnectedness from average voters.

“This is another case in American politics of those on each side taking the same written words and reaching their own conclusions,” said Ed Brookover, a Republican strategist and former Trump campaign adviser. “Just as with the so-called Russian collusion case, you’re going to find a whole lot of nothing here again. . . . When the president says, ‘Here we go again,’ it’s a very believable message.”

Public polling has shown steadily increasing support for the Democratic-led impeachment probe into whether Trump abused his power for personal and political gain. Officials from the State Department and White House have provided sworn testimony describing the Trump administration’s attempt to secure political investigations by the government in Ukraine while the president withheld almost $400 million in congressionally approved military aid and the chance for a visit with Zelensky.

Trump has dismissed the unfavorable poll numbers as “fake,” claiming on Saturday that he had “the real polls.” Trump has tweeted several times that he has 95 percent support within the Republican Party, an inflated number that far exceeds the 74 percent figure in the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll. No other public polling has shown Trump’s GOP support at 95 percent.

But the president’s varying assertions have had trouble gaining a foothold amid mounting incriminating information from the impeachment probe, which has begun to enter a more public-facing phase.

On Tuesday, Gordon Sondland, U.S. ambassador to the European Union, acknowledged telling one of Zelensky’s advisers that resumption of U.S. aid was tied to anti-corruption investigations that would target Democrats.

The acknowledgment in a deposition released Tuesday was a reversal from his earlier testimony, which Trump had previously cited in an attempt defend himself from charges of a quid pro quo.

The testimony from Sondland, a Trump donor and political appointee, could be more difficult for the president to dismiss than the allegations of several other Trump administration officials who have also described a political quid pro quo.

Trump has claimed without evidence that those officials were “Never Trumpers” peddling false accusations.

It’s part of a strategy to paint all incriminating information as emanating from biased sources, said Jamieson.

“If you can construct the world that anybody who says anything negative about the president is a venal partisan, you never have to get into any of the evidence because you distort the evidence and discredit the source of it,” she said. “That’s what Donald Trump does.”

 

[fraurosena]

It seems that twatwaddle Fredo dumb has tweeted out the name of the purported whistleblower. ? In doing so he has endangered their life and the lives of their family.

Could it be because of this?

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Where is Mike Pompeo? He’s hiding in fear of Donald Trump."

Spoiler

Since the investigation began into President Trump’s machinations in Ukraine, one of the most disturbing questions has been: Where is Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, who’s supposed to shield his diplomats from political interference?

And now we have the answer: Pompeo, in recent months, has essentially been in hiding, protecting himself while his subordinates took the hit — evidently hoping to preserve his influence with Trump. Sometimes his deflections and denials have been outright misleading.

Pompeo has badly tarnished his reputation in accommodating Trump. He joins the long list of those damaged by their service to this president. If you’re someone like me, who thought Pompeo was one of the smarter and more effective people in the administration, it’s a sad moment.

This harsh judgment is nearly inescapable after reading the transcripts released Monday of testimony from two key State Department officials: Marie Yovanovitch, a 33-year Foreign Service veteran Trump fired in May as ambassador to Ukraine; and Michael McKinley, a 37-year veteran, who resigned in October as Pompeo’s senior adviser because “the disparagement of a career diplomat [Yovanovitch] doing her job was unacceptable to me.”

At the core of Pompeo’s story is the conundrum of what public service means under an erratic president such as Trump. Pompeo’s defenders argue that the secretary might serve his personal interest by resigning and protecting what’s left of his political career. But would that be the honorable choice, they ask, if it would mean abandoning the State Department to even greater chaos?

A similar dilemma vexed former defense secretary Jim Mattis for two years. He stayed silent in public over Trump’s tantrums and abuses, hoping that in private he could prevent even worse catastrophes. But, in the end, this strategy of accommodation wasn’t tenable; the rucksack became too heavy, and Mattis resigned in December.

Pompeo’s defenders argue that his story is more complicated than it appears. They say that through 2018 and early 2019, as Trump lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani was spinning malicious falsehoods to undermine Yovanovitch, Pompeo had a senior deputy press Giuliani for evidence to support his charges. Giuliani never produced any, and Yovanovitch stayed — until Trump personally demanded she be fired, after which Pompeo acceded.

In the lead-up to her firing and following the publicity over her dismissal, Yovanovitch kept asking for support from her bosses. That was especially so after Donald Trump Jr. tweeted in March that she was a “joker” who should be sacked. But Pompeo was mum.

“What I was told was that there was concern that the rug would be pulled out from underneath the State Department if they put out something publicly,” Yovanovitch testified.

In late April, she was ordered home. Acting assistant secretary of state Philip Reeker told her that “the secretary had tried to protect [Yovanovitch] but was no longer able to do that,” and Deputy Secretary John Sullivan informed her she was fired. “I said, ‘What have I done wrong?’ And he said, ‘You’ve done nothing wrong.’”

Pompeo didn’t explain or apologize. His counselor, Thomas Ulrich Brechbuhl, refused Yovanovitch’s request for a meeting.

Trump’s groundless attacks against Yovanovitch continued, as did Pompeo’s silence. We learned months later that Pompeo had listened in on the infamous July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, during which Trump asked for a political “favor” in exchange for sending Javelin missiles to Ukraine — and described Yovanovitch as “bad news,” warning that she was “going to go through some things.” Pompeo did nothing.

When a transcript of the menacing July call was released Sept. 25, Yovanovitch felt personally threatened, and she again asked for help. Pompeo said nothing publicly in her defense.

McKinley, Pompeo’s senior adviser, pressed the secretary to issue a brief statement of support for Yovanovitch. “He listened. That was it. Sort of, ‘thank you.’ That was the limit of the conversation,” McKinley testified. He went to see Pompeo twice more over the next few days, the final time to resign, telling Pompeo: “This situation isn’t acceptable.”

Pompeo told ABC News last month that “not once” did McKinley “say a single thing about his concerns” about Yovanovitch’s treatment. By McKinley’s sworn testimony, that statement was false.

What is character? It’s difficult to define, but as NPR’s Scott Simon recently noted, a good, short summary is the U.S. Military Academy motto: “A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.”

We should be careful not to judge others’ character, especially in the hotbox of today’s Washington. But it’s deeply troubling to see a powerful person such as Pompeo who is silent in the face of lies and who takes no action to protect his subordinates from wrongdoing.

 

[fraurosena]

Here's a link to Bill Taylor's testimony, that was released yesterday.

I have to say, after reading all these transcripts, that it's quite remarkable how tame the republican questioning is. It's never substantive, but it's never aggressive either. The witnesses are treated with at least a modicum of respect.

Will they as decently next week during the televised open hearings? Or will they be creating some kind of spectacle to distract from the devastating evidence the witnesses will be stating? It's a veritable catch 22 in any case. If they act decently, they won't be protecting Trump. If they create a spectacle, they'll be showing themselves up for the distracting assholes that they are. Either way, it's not good for them.

I'm guessing it will depend on how rattled the republican party is after last Tuesday's election results.  If they're rattled, and afraid of their personal political future, they'll choose to act decently.

If not... well, public spectacle during the testimonies next week is a given.

 

Edited November 7, 2019 by fraurosena
changed link from highlights to full transcript

[smittykins]

Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of “Epstein didn’t kill himself” FB memes, and frankly, they’re getting a little old.  I just want to yell “OK, I get it!  Enough already!”

[fraurosena]

Somebody only just explained it to him (only just??) and the mango moron still doesn't understand that this is an impeachment inquiry. Inquiries are investigations; a gathering of information. A hearing does not equal a trial.

Once it does get to the trial phase, in the Senate, then he can have those lawyers he wants so much. 

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[thoughtful]

Ratfucking, a la Watergate. Donald Segretti is somewhere shaking his head.

[fraurosena]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

All this ratfuckery is simply a sign they know they can't win this battle on legal, substantive arguments or plain, simple facts. Playing dirty is all they know, and that is the tactic they will follow. 

And the whole world will see exactly who and what they are. Pestering, badgering, bullying whiners who can't win fairly and need to resort to underhanded tactics to try and get their political opponents down. 

[fraurosena]

I can't say I blame him. Poor dude was caught between a rock and a hard place.

Ukraine’s Zelensky Bowed to Trump’s Demands, Until Luck Spared Him

Quote

It was early September, and Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, faced an agonizing choice: whether to capitulate to President Trump’s demands to publicly announce investigations against his political enemies or to refuse, and lose desperately needed military aid.

Only Mr. Trump could unlock the aid, he had been told by two United States senators, and time was running out. If the money, nearly $400 million, were not unblocked by the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, it could be lost in its entirety.

In a flurry of WhatsApp messages and meetings in Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, over several days, senior aides debated the point. Avoiding partisan politics in the United States had always been the first rule of Ukrainian foreign policy, but the military aid was vital to the war against Russian-backed separatist forces in eastern Ukraine, a conflict that has cost 13,000 lives since it began in 2014.

By then, however, Mr. Zelensky’s staffers were already conceding to what seemed to be the inevitable, and making plans for a public announcement about the investigations. It was a fateful decision for a fledgling president elected on an anticorruption platform that included putting an end to politically motivated investigations.

Elements of this internal Ukrainian debate have appeared in the Ukrainian news media and seeped into congressional testimony in the United States, as part of an impeachment inquiry undertaken after accusations surfaced of Mr. Trump’s demands.

But interviews in Kiev with government officials, lawmakers and others close to the Zelensky government have revealed new details of how high-level Ukrainian officials ultimately decided to acquiesce to President Trump’s request — and, by a stroke of luck, never had to follow through.

Aides were arguing in favor of “bowing to what was demanded,” said Petro Burkovskiy, a senior fellow at the Democratic Initiatives Foundation who has close ties to the Ukrainian government. They were willing to do so, he said, despite the risk of losing bipartisan support in the United States by appearing to assist Mr. Trump’s re-election bid. “The cost was high.”

As President Trump’s principal envoy to Ukraine, Gordon Sondland, admitted Tuesday in congressional testimony, the Trump administration had withheld the military aid to pressure Mr. Zelensky to make a public statement on the two investigations: one into whether former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had pressed for the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating Burisma, a natural gas company where his son served on the board; the other into unproven accusations that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that meddled in the 2016 election to promote the candidacy of Hillary Clinton.

In the July 25 phone call that provoked a whistle-blower complaint and touched off the impeachment inquiry, Mr. Zelensky offered private assurances that his government would look into those matters.

But a public statement that raised doubts about Russian meddling and Mr. Biden, whom the president regarded as the greatest threat to his re-election, would be far more useful politically to Mr. Trump. Not only would it smear Mr. Biden, it could also appear to undermine the Mueller investigation into Russian electoral interference by pinning some blame on Ukraine.

Impeachment investigators released the deposition transcript of Bill Taylor, the top American diplomat in Ukraine, expanding on the opening statement that was published after his closed-door testimony last month. Mr. Taylor said he repeatedly warned other officials of the perils of tying a military assistance package to investigations of President Trump’s political rivals.

Mr. Taylor, who has served in every administration of both parties since 1985, is an esteemed figure in the world of diplomacy. In his testimony, he said that America’s traditional foreign policy was being subverted by people outside the normal chain of command — particularly Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer.

House Democrats announced that they would hold public impeachment hearings next week. The first session, on Wednesday, will involve Mr. Taylor and George Kent, a senior State Department official in charge of Ukraine policy. Marie Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine, will testify on Friday.

A tug-of-war ensued between a senior aide to Mr. Zelensky, Andriy Yermak, and another of Mr. Trump’s envoys to Ukraine, Kurt Volker, over the wording of the proposed public statement. Mr. Volker went so far as to draft a statement for Mr. Zelensky that mentioned both investigations.

Mr. Yermak pushed back, suggesting language that mentioned investigations but in general terms, so as not to antagonize the Democrats. Late in the negotiations, the American diplomats consented to dropping mention of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election.

Even as Mr. Yermak negotiated the wording in August, the stakes were clear. While rumors had been swirling for months about a possible hold on military aid, by early August high-level Ukrainian officials had confirmed the freeze.

The trade soon became explicit. They were approached in September by Mr. Sondland, a major donor to Mr. Trump’s inauguration who had been appointed ambassador to the European Union despite having no diplomatic experience. At that point, he explained in blunt terms to Mr. Zelensky and Mr. Yermak, there was little chance the aid would be forthcoming until they made the public statement on the investigations.

“I said that resumption of the U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anticorruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks,” Mr. Sondland said in sworn testimony released Tuesday by the House committees leading the impeachment inquiry.

Mr. Trump wanted the Ukrainian president to speak on CNN, William B. Taylor Jr., the top American diplomat in Ukraine, testified.

But aides to Mr. Zelensky, on high alert to avoid any move that might irritate Mr. Trump, wondered if that was such a good idea, in that Mr. Trump habitually called CNN “fake news” in his Twitter posts.

They also uncovered a post from Mr. Trump attacking Fox News as “not working for us anymore!”

Nearly all Mr. Zelensky’s top advisers favored his making the public statement, said one of the officials who participated in the debate. United States military aid, they agreed, as well as diplomatic backing for impending peace talks to end the war outweighed the risks of appearing to take sides in American politics.

There was a lone holdout — Alexander Danyliuk, the director of the national security council. Mr. Danyliuk, who resigned in late September, told the Ukrainian news media that the Zelensky administration would now need to “correct the mistakes” in relations with the United States and “in particular their own.”

Finally bending to the White House request, Mr. Zelensky’s staff planned for him to make an announcement in an interview on Sept. 13 with Fareed Zakaria, the host of a weekly news show on CNN.

Though plans were in motion to give the White House the public statement it had sought, events in Washington saved the Ukrainian government from any final decision and eliminated the need to make the statement.

Word of the freeze in military aid had leaked out, and Congress was in an uproar. Two days before the scheduled interview, the Trump administration released the assistance and Mr. Zelensky’s office quickly canceled the interview.

Since then, Trump administration officials including the White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, have tried to argue that the security assistance could not have been conditioned on the public statement, because the aid was released without it.

That stance has crumbled as a succession of United States diplomats, capped by Mr. Sondland on Tuesday, have testified in the impeachment inquiry that the freeze on aid was part of a quid pro quo designed to coerce Mr. Zelensky into making the public statement.

In Kiev, there is still a debate about whether Mr. Zelensky caved or held out. “The Zelensky team was ready to make this quid quo pro,” said Mr. Burkovskiy, the analyst. “They were ready to do this.”

But Pavlo Klimkin, Ukraine’s foreign minister until a change of government on Aug. 29, said there was no telling what Mr. Zelensky would have ended up saying in the interview, as there were so many versions of a statement under negotiation.

“From the contacts that took place, it’s difficult to say if they led, or did not lead, to concrete deals,” Mr. Klimkin said in an interview. In public, Mr. Zelensky has insisted he would never order a politicized prosecution.

Either way, Mr. Klimkin said, Ukrainian officials were at the least keenly aware of the stakes — a trade of United States assistance for political favors, even as Mr. Trump’s supporters have insisted they should not have viewed relations in this light.

“We are not idiots, or at least not all of us,” Mr. Klimkin said.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Four big facts that blow up the GOP’s latest defense of Trump"

Spoiler

With the impeachment inquiry heading into its public phase, Republicans are road-testing yet another deeply absurd defense of President Trump: They are conceding that, yes, there may have been a quid pro quo, but there’s no proof Trump himself was behind it.

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a slavish loyalist, puts it this way: “When I get to ask questions, and when you see all of the transcripts, you will understand that there is no direct linkage to the president of the United States.”

This echoes the White House’s latest line. After Ambassador Gordon Sondland admitted in a new statement to informing Ukraine that hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid were indeed conditioned on Ukraine undertaking the “investigations” Trump wanted, the White House press secretary claimed Sondland had failed to “identify any solid source for that assumption.”

This new pushback is based on the fact that in that statement, Sondland claimed in lawyered language that he had “presumed” the military aid was being withheld to pressure Ukraine to do Trump’s bidding, and that he “does not know” who suspended the aid.

In other words, defenders will stress that no one can conclusively show Trump personally ordering the full extortion plot. Trump never directly said: You’re not getting the military aid you desperately need to protect your country from Russian aggression until you help me absolve Russia of its role in sabotaging the 2016 election on my behalf and help me rig the next one by smearing potential rival Joe Biden.

Here are four facts revealing this new line to be epic nonsense.

Trump himself suspended the military aid.

Trump personally ordered acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to inform budget officials that the aid that had already been appropriated by Congress was being frozen, officials told The Post.

Trump did this one week before his July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which Trump demanded the investigations he wanted, explicitly mentioning Biden and the conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, hacked the Democratic emails to set up Russia and Trump.

Notably, officials were instructed not to share information about the freeze with lawmakers. What’s more, CNN reported that as late as Aug. 30, Trump was seriously considering freezing the aid permanently, even though the Pentagon had recommended against it.

So Sondland can perhaps claim in some philosophical sense not to “know” who suspended the aid. But we do know who did it. Trump did.

Giuliani publicly confirmed the whole plot, and that he was acting at Trump’s direction.

Trump froze the aid to Ukraine at a time when Trump lawyer Rudolph Giuliani had already said publicly for months that he was pressuring Ukraine to carry out these investigations. As far back as early May, Giuliani explicitly said he wanted those investigations to target both the conspiracy theory and Biden specifically.

Giuliani confirmed this would be “very helpful to my client" — that he was doing it to personally benefit Trump. Giuliani subsequently confirmed that Trump was directing the whole scheme, saying: “I don’t do anything that involves my client without speaking with my client.”

So, to recap thus far: We know Trump both froze the military aid that Ukraine desperately sought and was working directly with Giuliani to pressure Ukraine to pursue the “investigations” Trump wanted.

Those texts demonstrate the meaning of Sondland’s confession.

In Sondland’s statement, he concedes that on Sept. 1, he directly informed a top aide to Zelensky that “resumption of U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anti-corruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks.”

Those texts between Sondland and other ambassadors and Ukrainian officials show him negotiating, at the direction of Giuliani and the White House, for Ukraine’s “anti-corruption statement” to mention both the 2016 Ukraine-hack conspiracy theory and Burisma, the company where Biden’s son worked that’s central to a fabricated tale of Biden corruption.

In other words, it had to be a public statement specifically absolving Russia of electoral sabotage and implicating Biden in fake corruption. As noted, Giuliani, acting at Trump’s direction, publicly said this for months.

So, to recap thus far: We know Sondland directly informed Ukraine that the military aid would not resume until Ukraine produced the statement Trump and Giuliani wanted and that this statement had to explicitly absolve Russia and target Biden and that Ukraine knew this.

Pence directly delivered the message about suspended aid to Ukraine.

On Sept. 1, the same day Sondland informed a top Zelensky aide that the military aid was conditional, Vice President Pence met with Zelensky.

Zelensky raised the withheld aid with Pence. And as The Post reports, Pence informed Zelensky that the administration was “still looking at” the aid, i.e., it was on hold. Pence also told Zelensky he needed to do more to fight “corruption.”

But we now know from the revelations cited above that what Trump and Giuliani actually wanted on the “corruption” front was a statement directly implicating the 2016 conspiracy theory and Biden.

So, to recap thus far: We know Pence told Zelensky that the aid was being withheld and that Ukraine had to do more to fight corruption and that Ukraine had already been informed by Sondland and Giuliani this really meant absolving Russia and targeting Biden. This was the administration’s message.

The bottom line

Trump suspended the military aid. Trump’s vice president delivered the message about that suspended aid directly to Zelensky. Giuliani and Trump spent months pressuring Ukraine to carry out Trump’s sordid political scheme to absolve Russia and target Biden. Trump’s key ringleader Sondland, acting at the direction of Trump and Giuliani throughout, directly told Ukraine that getting the aid was conditional on bringing that scheme to fruition.

Incredibly, Trump’s spinners are now trying to argue that Sondland suddenly freelanced that last piece of the plot — the extortion piece — entirely on his own.

 

[fraurosena]

How are the Trumpians going to defend this then?

 

[fraurosena]

Boom. No rope-a-dope. Bye Felicia.

 

[fraurosena]

It's a miracle they're not calling the inquiry a perjury trap. 

Mick Mulvaney won't show up for impeachment probe testimony, despite subpoena

Quote

Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney will skip a scheduled deposition Friday before the House committees leading the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, despite receiving subpoena for his attendance, a senior administration official told NBC News.

“He won’t be showing up," the official said.

The House Intelligence Committee had subpoenaed Mulvaney to testify Friday, an official working on the probe told NBC News late Thursday.

The decision by Mulvaney, one of the highest-ranking officials subpoenaed in the inquiry to date, to not come is in line with several other officials who were ordered by the president not to cooperate with the investigation.

During a press conference last month, Mulvaney admitted that the president withheld vital military aid to pressure Ukraine to conduct investigations that would benefit the president’s personal and political interests, an official working on the impeachment inquiry said. He has since walked back the televised statement.

When asked by ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl if he was describing a quid pro quo between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Mulvaney replied, "We do that all the time with foreign policy," citing the example that the U.S. held up money to three Central American countries to convince them to change their immigration policies.

“Get over it,” Mulvaney said. “There’s going to be political influence in foreign policy.”

Despite the public admission and subsequent walk-back, other testimony during the inquiry has indicated Mulvaney could shed additional light on further abuse of power by the president, the official added. Investigators are wrapping up the private interviews as they prepare to start public hearings next week.

Democrats scheduled 13 witnesses to testify behind closed doors this week but so far only two people ― Jennifer Williams, special adviser to Europe and Russia to Vice President Mike Pence and another State Department employee, David Hale ― have shown up.

Democrats also requested interviews from two other high-level Trump administration witnesses, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and former National Security Adviser John Bolton. Perry did not show up for his Wednesday interview. Following suit, Bolton also failed to appear Thursday for closed-door testimony, which his lawyer quickly qualified as being voluntary.

Bolton, who was fired by Trump in September, has been named in prior testimonies by other officials, who according to public transcripts and reports from inside the room, describe Bolton as being disturbed by Trump and his associates pushing to get Ukraine to probe former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, as well as a conspiracy theory related to the 2016 presidential election.

Still, Democrats have indicated they think they already have ample testimony about Trump's conduct on Ukraine. The slew of current and former officials from the State Department and White House have appeared and largely corroborated the same narrative — that Trump had delegated his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to guide U.S.-Ukraine policy and that the two men were focused on pressuring Ukraine as the administration withheld military aid from the country.

 

[fraurosena]

I have some Friday night reading to do! 

Fiona Hill's testimony and that of Alexander Vindman.

[GreyhoundFan]

I'm so not looking forward to the whining and tantrums from the repugs, which is sure to escalate to a fever pitch come Wednesday. DevinCow has a nice slap back to Jordan. (The responses in the thread are hilarious).

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Republicans attempt to move impeachment inquiry away from Trump"

Spoiler

House Republicans on Saturday pressed ahead with their efforts to move the impeachment inquiry away from President Trump, calling on Democrats to add witnesses to the probe including former vice president Joe Biden’s son and the whistleblower whose initial complaint kicked off the investigation.

The GOP demands were met with immediate skepticism from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), who warned against “sham investigations” of the Bidens and other issues in a clear signal that many of the witnesses were unlikely to be called.

The clash came as Democrats prepare to enter a new phase of the impeachment inquiry with public hearings beginning Wednesday, which will focus on Trump’s alleged efforts to pressure Ukrainian officials to dig up dirt on Joe Biden and other Democrats in exchange for military aid or a White House visit by the Ukrainian president. Witnesses who have testified out of public view have largely corroborated the whistleblower’s initial allegations.

Republicans have complained that the Democratic-run inquiry is unfairly partisan, and Trump said Saturday that he will “probably” release a transcript next week of an April call that he made to congratulate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on his election victory.

In the weeks ahead, the GOP’s focus will be to try to minimize Trump’s role in the Ukraine pressure campaign and to justify his actions by highlighting that country’s history of corruption problems, according to Republicans familiar with the party’s strategy who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

More than 2,500 pages of interview transcripts released over the past week provide a road map for the emerging Republican strategy. The documents show the extent to which GOP lawmakers involved in the hearings have focused on unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, Democratic political targets and other subjects favored by Trump allies — much of it ancillary to the probe at hand, according to a Washington Post review of the documents.

One GOP lawmaker repeatedly tried to pressure a witness into saying what he wanted to hear about a Ukrainian company that employed Biden’s son. Another member quizzed a former ambassador in the impeachment inquiry about her national heritage, seeming to probe for bias. And a third Republican interrogated the same diplomat about whether her staff “monitored” the social media account of an alt-right conspiracy theorist, whose main claim to fame is smearing a Washington pizzeria as the site of a fictional Democratic pedophile ring.

There were also questions about the Clinton Foundation and long-gone officials from the Obama administration; probing of witnesses over the attorneys they hired or the release of opening statements; and inquiries about whether witnesses improperly “unmasked” the identities of Trump officials under investigation.

The sprawling list of potential witnesses named by Republicans on Saturday continued the pattern. They included Hunter Biden, whose father is a leading Democratic candidate to challenge Trump in 2020; Hunter Biden’s business partner Devon Archer; the unnamed whistleblower, who Trump and some of his allies have campaigned to publicly identify; the researcher Nellie Ohr of Fusion GPS, which commissioned a dossier linking Russia and Trump; and Alexandra Chalupa, a Ukrainian American who worked with the Democratic National Committee.

Republicans also asked to call two witnesses who have already testified behind closed doors, a request that appears likely to be granted by Democrats: National Security Council official Tim Morrison and former Ukraine envoy Kurt Volker, each of whom corroborated parts of the whistleblower’s complaint while also providing some cover for Republicans.

Rep. Devin Nunes (Calif.), the ranking Republican on the intelligence panel, argued that witnesses such as Biden and Archer would “assist the American public in understanding the nature and extent of Ukraine’s pervasive corruption, information that bears directly on President Trump’s long-standing and deeply-held skepticism of the country.”

Schiff said Democrats would evaluate the requests but added in a statement that the inquiry “will not serve … as a vehicle to undertake the same sham investigations into the Bidens or 2016 that the President pressed Ukraine to conduct for his personal political benefit, or to facilitate the President’s effort to threaten, intimidate, and retaliate against the whistleblower who courageously raised the initial alarm.”

In their questioning of witnesses so far, Republican lawmakers have been particularly focused on Hunter Biden, who received $50,000 a month for sitting on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma while his father was U.S. vice president. They also sought to have witnesses elaborate on why Trump may have been upset with Ukraine and therefore potentially justified in holding back military funding, including asking questions about Ukrainian politicians who said negative things about Trump during his 2016 campaign, the transcripts show.

Some Trump allies have suggested that the negative remarks amounted to Ukraine’s interfering in the 2016 election — a contention that Democrats, intelligence experts and even some Republicans dismiss as an attempt to muddy the waters over Russia’s systematic interference in the election to help Trump. That line of inquiry — including suggestions that Ukrainians were out to get Trump or that the Bidens did something corrupt — is expected to be a recurring theme for Republicans in public hearings this month.

The contrast between the two sides was evident during the testimony of the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, William B. Taylor Jr., who told lawmakers Oct. 22 that the White House had threatened to withdraw much-needed military aid unless Kyiv announced investigations for Trump’s political benefit. The unexpected level of detail in Taylor’s opening statement made many in the room gasp, officials said, and Democratic lawmakers spent their first hour of questioning that day dissecting the details.

But when it was their turn, Republicans didn’t ask a single question about Taylor’s opening remarks during their first allotted hour, according to the newly released transcript of the session. Instead, they focused on the Bidens and a 2017 Politico article about how some Ukrainian officials had criticized Trump as a candidate in 2016.

“You mentioned that the company Burisma was a bit of a shady organization?” GOP staff attorney Steve Castor said, moving the conversation with Taylor toward the company that hired Hunter Biden. “Do you think it’s possible that he was tapped for the board because his dad was the vice president?”

Taylor demurred: “So, Mr. Castor, I’m here as a fact witness. I don’t have any facts on that.”

Republicans frequently complained about the handling of the probe and argued that the president was being denied his right to due process, the transcripts show. They also frequently criticized Schiff, accusing the majority of keeping them out of the loop on witness schedules, copies of subpoenas or opening statements.

“I would just state that if we’re going to continue this circus, I, at least, would like to know what time the circus begins,” Nunes said at one point.

In multiple interviews, Nunes used his time to question the origins of the FBI’s Russia investigation and to press allegations of bias in the Justice Department. That included attempts to get witnesses to say that the “Steele dossier,” a document alleging links between Trump and Russia, had a Ukrainian connection.

Most witnesses told Nunes they had no idea what he was talking about.

“Are you aware of who paid for the dossier?” Nunes asked Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland. When Sondland said no, Nunes pressed again: “Would it surprise you to learn that the Clinton campaign and the Democrat National Committee paid for the dossier?”

“I don’t know anything about it,” Sondland said, later echoing the same comment when Nunes persisted with his line of questioning. “I don’t know anything about that, Congressman, I’m sorry. … Again, I haven’t been following the Steele dossier.”

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) asked former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch about the origins of her nickname, Masha, seeming to suggest it was Ukrainian; Yovanovitch informed him it was actually Russian. Republicans also grilled her and her attorney about how her opening statement ended up in The Post.

Lawmakers sought to cast former NSC official Fiona Hill as a leaker, asking her why so many reporters have her cellphone number. Hill noted that she was previously a heavily quoted expert at the Brookings Institution. “I did not leak any information,” she testified. “I did not talk to the press.”

During the deposition of Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman, Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) raised questions about why the Purple Heart recipient was the only person to formally complain about a July 25 call in which Trump asked the Ukrainian president to “do us a favor” by investigating his adversaries.

Vindman — who said the request was “improper” and brought it to the attention of a White House lawyer — told Stewart he could only speak for himself rather than others who listened to the call. Stewart kept pressing him, eventually getting into an argument with Vindman’s attorney.

“I’m going to ask the same stinking question and I’m going to ask it the same way. … You don’t need to come in here and lecture us on how I will ask my questions,” Stewart said.

“I’m going to represent my client … and you’re not just going to run over my client. I’m sorry,” lawyer Michael Volkov replied.

Joe Biden has been a favorite target for Trump-allied lawmakers. Many have adopted Trump’s unsubstantiated assertion that Biden pushed for the ouster of a Ukrainian prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, because he was investigating Burisma.

In one session, Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) tried three times to get George Kent, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs, to say there was an investigation of Burisma at the time Joe Biden pushed for Shokin’s exit. U.S. and Ukrainian officials have said the probe into Burisma was dormant at the time.

“But you did testify that Shokin had an investigation into Burisma … correct?” Zeldin asked. After Kent replied, “I did not say that,” Zeldin tried again: “When did you learn of an investigation by Shokin into Burisma?”

“I just told you, I did not learn of an investigation. I’ve read claims that there may have been an investigation,” Kent said.

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) asked a host of unusual questions during the initial stage of the inquiry, including about whether Yovanovitch’s staff monitored the social media accounts of conservative and fringe figures. On his list of names was Jack Posobiec, the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theorist who circulated the bizarre conspiracy about a child sex ring.

“I don't know,” she responded.

Republicans also tried to get witnesses to back their unsubstantiated claims of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election. After walking Taylor through news clips about Ukrainians’ weighing in against Trump, Castor asked him: “Isn’t it fair to say that, if you’re aligned with the Trump administration, isn’t it legitimate to have a good-faith belief that Ukrainians were operating against you in the 2016 election?”

Taylor said “if the reporting is correct … you could certainly have the opinion.” But a few minutes later he shot down Nunes’ assertion that Ukraine wanted Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to win in 2016.

“Again, according to this Politico document … there were a couple of Ukrainians who did what you said. When you say ‘Ukrainians,’ that paints a broad brush,” he said.

Such disagreements were common. During Sondland’s deposition, Zeldin suggested that the witness felt “unduly pressured” to agree with a Democratic question about whether it was “inappropriate to ask the Ukrainian government to conduct an investigation into a 2020 political rival.”

“I don’t think I felt unduly pressured at this deposition at all,” Sondland replied.

 

[fraurosena]

In addition to the lines of questioning that @GreyhoundFan’s article mentions:

In Vindman’s transcript, which I’m still in the process of reading, there are some big clashes between Meadows, Jordan and Schiff and Swalwell when Meadows’ and Jordan’s questions are clearly attempting to unmask the whistleblower.  At one point, Meadows literally yells at Swalwell to “Shut up!” Which tells you just about everything you need to know about the levels the Trumpians are willing to stoop to in order to protect their dear leader.

[fraurosena]

This is a deflection tactic. According to the witnesses of this call, the call was cordial and congratulatory. It's why they were so surprised at the complete change of tone during the second call. 

From Vindman's testimony (pg. 116):

Q: Sticking with the call, I believe you testified that President Trump's demeanor or tone was different on the July 25th call than it had been on the April 21st call. Is that right?

A: Correct

Q: Can you explain what you mean? How was it different?

A: So the call [...] that occurred on April 21st was complimentary, positive. He repeatedly praised President Zelensky for the significant landslide victory he had achieved. And, in general, I think there was, you know, probably a little bit of humor exchanged. As you may know, President Zelensky is a comedian. So he tries to put in a couple of, I guess, lighter lines in there to help him build rapport. I think he -- frankly, President Zelensky attempted to do that in this case also. It just didn't seem to carry with the President.

Q: And can you describe President Trump's tone during the July 25th call?

A: I mean, I guess the concrete is he spoke lower. I'm not there in the room with him -- and I in no way have had significant interaction to somehow assess what he's like or anything of that nature. But it just was -- based on the comparison between the two calls, it just seemed -- it was -- the atmospherics and the tone were not the same.

So if Trump believes releasing the transcript of the April 21st call will somehow be to his advantage, he's going to be sorely disappointed. It will only serve to highlight the difference with the July 25th call.

Edited November 10, 2019 by fraurosena
added tweet so you know what the heck I'm talking about

[Howl]

This is an interesting and (I think) important piece of info, outlined in this CNN article:  Ukraine Aid Was Released After Federal Lawyers Said Trump Freeze Was Illegal: Report     The president has claimed he was one to release the funds, so there was no quid pro quo for his call to investigate Joe Biden.

 The $400 million was released to Ukraine after 

Quote

lawyers determined that the White House Office of Management and Budget and, therefore, the president, had no legal standing to block the funds...

This article from CNN is vague on which lawyers from which agency determined this.  It also exposes Trump in another lie, and puts Mulvaney's balls in a vise, because, Mulvaney is still the formal head of Office of Management and Budget. 

and puts Pompeo in yet another hot spot because 

Quote

The decision was outlined in a classified memo to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo,

and this 

Quote

Trump has pointed to the fact that he released the aid before a probe was begun. But Bloomberg now reports that he was no longer in control of disbursement when the money was released.

So WTAF? This seems bombshell-ish. 

*Hies off to twitter to get some updates.*

Edited November 10, 2019 by Howl

[fraurosena]

17 minutes ago, Howl said:

This is an interesting and (I think) important piece of info, outlined in this CNN article:  Ukraine Aid Was Released After Federal Lawyers Said Trump Freeze Was Illegal: Report     The president has claimed he was one to release the funds, so there was no quid pro quo for his call to investigate Joe Biden.

 The $400 million was released to Ukraine after 

This article from CNN is vague on which lawyers from which agency determined this.  It also exposes Trump in another lie, and puts Mulvaney's balls in a vise, because, Mulvaney is still the formal head of Office of Management and Budget. 

and puts Pompeo in yet another hot spot because 

and this 

So WTAF? This seems bombshell-ish. 

*Hies off to twitter to get some updates.*

Although the release of the aid to Ukraine is bombshell-ish for Mulvaney and should lead to Mulvaney's own indictment/impeachment, it has absolutely nothing to do with the impeachable offenses committed by Trump himself.

There does not need to be a quid for the quo for it to be bribery and therefore the act for which Trump can, and will be, impeached -- bribery being one of two offences expressly named in the Constitution as impeachable. Trump personally threatened to not release the aid if Zelensky did not publicly commit to investigating Burisma and Biden, a U.S. citizen. That's bribery. It does not matter that in the end the aid was released or that Zelensky did not commit to the investigations (although he was planning to announce them when the aid was released). 

Focussing on the fact that the aid was eventually given is a sleight of hand by the trumpians, who are trying to negate the actual crime that occurred: bribery of a foreign country in order to personally profit politically.