November 14-15, 2019: President Trump Tries to Scare a Witness - Doesn't Remember Anything Else

 

11/14-15/19: Thursday, Americans were left to digest the public testimony of the first two witnesses in the impeachment inquiry hearings on Wednesday. But all day Thursday, and again Friday, important developments continued to spill out. On Friday, a third witness testified for several hours, this time, Marie Yovanovitch, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine. 

As they say, you can’t change a leopard’s spots. Nor can you keep President Trump’s itchy fingers off the Twitter button. Friday morning, at 10:01 a.m. with Ms. Yovanovitch just beginning testimony in front of cameras and under oath, the President of the United States could not resist insulting her, as he has done several times before.

 

Let us pause a moment, to remember famous public testimonies in years past. You had, of course, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton answering questions for eight hours as part of the Benghazi hearings. That testimony came on October 22, 2015, in an era before Republicans started screaming about “perjury traps.” 

There was, of course President Trum….…No. Wait. President Trump refused to testify publicly as part of the Russia investigation. 

His lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, made it clear the president would have to jump over his lifeless corpse, before Rudy would allow him to stick either foot, or both feet, in any “perjury trap.” 

(Your humble blogger would note that a “perjury trap” seems to exist any time President Trump moves his lips.) 

 

____________________ 

“Well, I want to let you know, Ambassador, that some of us here take witness intimidation very, very seriously.” 

Chairman Schiff

____________________

 

 

Now, we had Trump insulting a witness, via Twitter – at a moment when that witness was set to testify. Chairman Schiff halted proceedings immediately when alerted to that fact. He read the following tweet out loud.

 

Then he asked, 

Ambassador you’ve shown the courage to come forward today and testify notwithstanding the fact you are urged by the White House or State Department not to, notwithstanding the fact that as you testified earlier the president implicitly threatened you in that call record [of July 25]. And now the president in real time is attacking you. What effect do you think that has on other witnesses’ willingness to come forward and expose wrongdoing?

 

There were gasps in the hearing room and Yovanovitch let out a loud puff before she could respond. 

“Well, it’s very intimidating,” she said. 

“It’s designed to intimidate, is it not?” Schiff continued. 

The ambassador pondered her answer. She had an air of dignity and long training as a diplomat (33 years in the field) had taught her to choose words with care. “I mean, I can’t speak to what the president is trying to do,” she responded, with a slight roll of the eyes, “but I think the effect is to me intimidating.” 

“Well, I want to let you know, Ambassador,” Schiff said, “that some of us here take witness intimidation very, very seriously.”

 

Republicans on the panel spend most of their morning time, ignoring what Yovanovitch has to say, instead, blasting Schiff and Democrats for how the hearings are being conducted. But they are careful not to attack Ambassador Yovanovitch, and almost effusive in praise after lunch. Apparently, they have been tipped to the fact that the president’s attacks on an active witness are not playing well with the general public. 

Rep. Brad Wenstrup of Ohio gently asks Yovanovitch if it were not true: a president could remove any ambassador he might want. 

“I obviously don’t dispute that the president has the right to withdraw an ambassador at any time for any reason,” she agreed, before adding, “but I do wonder is why it was necessary to smear my reputation also.” 

Clearly caught off guard, Wenstrup had no idea how to respond, saying lamely, that that was not the question he asked. 

It was, however, the question, Ambassador Yovanovitch answered. The president could have removed her at any time. Why, then, had it been necessary for Rudy Giuliani and his team (four members of which are now under arrest), and the president and his media allies, to tear her reputation down? 

All Americans – not counting the 122,600 fools who “liked” Trump’s tweet – should demand an answer to that question. 

 

Trump was once again threatening the rule of law. 

Asked later about that Twitter post, even Rep. Jordan, didn’t defend it. When a reporter wondered if it was appropriate for Trump to smear Ambassador Yovanovitch, Jordan reverted to GOP Talking Point #1. “Where’s the whistleblower?” he demanded to know. We have to hear from the whistleblower in public. We have to expose him or her. A whole pack of cowardly Republican lawmakers stood behind him when the reporter asked again: Should a president ever smear a witness? 

Rep. Elise Stefanik spoke up, as if a random thought had popped into her head, “We’re not here to talk about tweets.” 

It was not a proud moment for Stefanik. It was another repulsive performance by Jim Jordan, a man without decency or shame. The lawmakers gathered behind them looked like a class photo for cowards. And anyone with a  passing understanding of the Constitution should have realized that the President of the United States was once again threatening the rule of law. 

When the hearing ended, and Chairman Schiff announced that the witness was free to go, Yovanovitch rose slowly from her seat. As she headed for the exits, the audience in the hearing room, and the Democrats on the panel rose and gave her a resounding round of applause.

Rep. Stefanik, right. Rep. Jordan is at left.

 

* 

MEANWHILE, the American people learned that Rudy Giuliani was under investigation himself. 

And at the very moment when Ambassador Yovanovitch was testifying, a sixth member of Team Trump 2016, Roger Stone, was found guilty of a series of crimes in federal court. In his case, a jury of his peers convicted him on seven felony counts. 

Let that sink in a moment. 

Stone had been charged with seven felonies. The jury judged him guilty of all seven, and did so with relative ease. One count, carrying the stiffest penalty, was a charge of witness intimidation. Other felonies involved lying to Congress and lying to Mueller’s investigators. The prosecutor in the case pointed out that all of Stone’s lies had served to protect the President of the United States.

Now, Mr. Stone was looking at up to half a century behind bars. Or praying for a pardon from a president with a soft spot for felons.

 

In judging Team Trump 2020, it would seem logical to remember that Stone wasn’t even the member of Team Trump 2016 to rack up the most felonies. That dishonor would go to Paul Manafort, convicted by a jury on eight counts, avoiding ten more convictions only because a single juror held out. That would be Paul Manafort, campaign chair in 2016. That would be Paul Manafort, campaign chair – later admitting that he was guilty of those ten counts, but not being charged, as part of a plea deal – then being convicted of two more felony counts – including witness tampering – after he started screwing around in secret again. So: ten felonies for Manafort! And when did most of this felonious activity occur? During a time when Manafort was working for corrupt politicians and sleazy oligarchs in Ukraine! 

(Listen carefully to the hearings next week: It’s a safe bet, no GOP questioner is going to bring Manafort up.)

 

In second place – with eight felonies – we have President Trump’s old personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. Two of his felony counts involved lying to protect then-candidate Donald J. Trump. In those instances, Cohen was helping Trump cover up $280,000 in combined payoffs to a porn star and Playboy Bunny he had banged, both while married to the current First Lady of the United States. Meaning: Citizen Trump had cheated on all three of his wives. Meaning, also: You had to be blind, deaf, dumb, unable to write or speak English, with your head in a large, brown paper sack – or a Republican on the House panel hearing testimony – to miss the obvious. Team Trump 2016 was a band of crooks, led by a habitual liar.  

Team Trump 2020 was shaping up to be the same, only with different players filling the roster. 

Its leader was the same habitual liar.

 

* 

SO: THE BAD NEWS for Team Trump 2020 kept piling up as the week drew to an end. A new witness, an official at the Office of Management and Budget had agreed to testify next week, despite efforts by the White House to block the testimony. A second witness came forward to say that she had also heard Ambassador Gordon Sondland’s July 26 call with the president, during a meal at a restaurant in Kiev. Before Friday ended, we learned that a third person heard at least part of that call. In fact, one witness testified in a closed door hearing late that afternoon; and that witness’s opening statement quickly leaked to the press. It’s a safe bet to say the leaker was a Democrat, or at least no fan of Trump. It’s an equally safe bet that if the statement had bolstered the president’s defense, Rep. Nunes would have been running down the streets of D.C., desperately looking for a friendly reporter he could hand it to. 

Ambassador Bill Taylor had first explained, under oath Wednesday, that he had been told that Sondland said, after the July 26 call, that Trump cared more about the investigation of the Biden family than he did about Ukraine. Nunes and his GOP colleagues were at great pains to note that all Taylor had was “second- and third-hand information.” Jordan got angry again and tried to make the case that all Taylor had were a few words, heard sixth-hand, from his wife’s brother-in-law’s second cousin, thrice removed. Something like that. Let’s just say it can be difficult to follow Jordan’s logic.

 

Trump, of course, had already told reporters he didn’t remember that call. That could be added to a mountain of material about which President Twitter Thumbs seemed clueless and uninformed. Trump was now forced to play Whack-a-Mole with a series of witnesses. He said he barely knew Ambassador Sondland. So: add Sondland to a list of people Trump couldn’t pick out of a police lineup, that list already including Taylor, George Kent, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman (Trump: “Why are people that I never even heard of testifying”) and Yovanovitch (I “really don’t know” her, Trump had said, even though he threatened her in the July 25 phone call). 

Also unknown to the President of the United States were Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman (both under indictment at this time, both having been photographed more than once with Donald J. Trump and even Don Jr., his son).

 

At any rate, by Friday evening, the opening statement of David Holmes was in the hands of the people who do the “Fake News.” 

Only Holmes’s opening statement was real. In it, he alleged that he was at the table on July 26, when Ambassador Sondland called President Trump from a restaurant in Kiev. This was one day after the infamous July 25 phone call, during which our president asked the Ukrainian leader to do him a “favor,” and also threatened Ambassador Yovanovitch, who he said was “going to go through some things.” Sondland apparently had to hold the phone away from his ear because Trump was loud. Holmes could hear part of what the president said and recognized his voice. 

We’ll save most of what Holmes says until transcripts of his testimony are released. But if what he says is true, another main prop supporting the president’s defense has been kicked aside. Holmes explained that in his job as a top aide at the U.S. embassy in Kyiv [or “Kiev”], he took notes during two important meetings on July 26. In the second, he said that President Zelenskyy 

“stated that during the July 25 call, President Trump had ‘three times’ raised ‘some very sensitive issues,’ and that he would have to follow up on those issues when they met ‘in person.’ Not having received a readout of the July 25 call, I did not know what those sensitive issues were.”

 

Not long after, Ambassador Sondland and Mr. Holmes went to lunch. Two other embassy staffers joined them. “Ambassador Sondland selected a bottle of wine that he shared among the four of us,” Holmes explained, “and we discussed topics such as marketing strategies for his hotel business.” 

 

“Big stuff” that benefits the President. 

When the wine was finished, Sondland said he was going to call the president and brief him on a recent, one-on-one meeting he had just held with a top Ukrainian aide to Mr. Zelenskyy. 

Holmes continued: 

I heard President Trump then clarify that Ambassador Sondland was in Ukraine. Ambassador Sondland replied, yes, he was in Ukraine, and went on to state that President Zelenskyy “loves your ass.” I then heard President Trump ask, “So, he’s gonna do the investigation?” Ambassador Sondland replied that “he’s gonna do it,” adding that President Zelenskyy will do “anything you ask him to.” Even though I did not take notes of these statements, I have a clear recollection that these statements were made. I believe that my colleagues who were sitting at the table also knew that Ambassador Sondland was speaking with the President.

 

An unrelated topic was introduced and discussed. When the call ended, Holmes followed up with a question. 

Ambassador Sondland remarked that the President was in a bad mood, as Ambassador Sondland stated was often the case early in the morning. I then took the opportunity to ask Ambassador Sondland for his candid impression of the President’s views on Ukraine. In particular, I asked Ambassador Sondland if it was true that the President did not “give a s—t about Ukraine.” Ambassador Sondland agreed that the President did not “give a s—t about Ukraine.” I asked why not, and Ambassador Sondland stated that the President only cares about “big stuff.” I noted that there was “big stuff” going on in Ukraine, like a war with Russia, and Ambassador Sondland replied that he meant “big stuff” that benefits the President, like the “Biden investigation” that Mr. Giuliani was pushing.

 

So, was there any evidence that Trump wanted to clean up corruption in Ukraine before granting military aid? 

There appeared to be none.

 

* 

IN RELATED NEWS, Bloomberg reported that Rudy Giuliani might soon become the second consecutive personal lawyer of President Trump to be indicted. Possible charges included campaign finance law violations and failure to register as a lobbyist for a foreign government. Rudy’s “work alongside the president” had also “raised counterintelligence concerns.” 

Or: 2016, déjà vu.

November 21, 2019: The Duck Is Quacking but Republican Lawmakers Don't Want to Hear It

 

11/21/19: The soul of the Republican Party departed Thursday when Rep. Will Hurd, easily the most reasonable GOP representative on the House Intelligence Committee, had his five minutes to speak. Having listened to more than a dozen witnesses, in closed-door sessions and now during public testimony, Hurd was the one Republican you thought might put principle over party.

 

 

___________________ 

“A free and prosperous Ukraine is important to the security of the Ukrainian people, the United States and the rest of the world.” 

Rep. Will Hurd

___________________

 

 

In his closing opportunity, he began to speak as if he would. Summing up President Trump’s efforts to put the President of Ukraine in a “public box,” as one witness put it, Hurd, a former C.I.A. officer was blunt. “I disagree with this sort of bungling foreign policy.” He called Trump’s comments during the July 25 phone call “inappropriate,” “misguided foreign policy,” and “not how the executive should handle such things.” You hoped next he was going to note, “And any attempt to bring foreign interference into the 2020 election would be…” 

Only, Hurd, backed down. 

“An impeachable offense should be compelling, overwhelming, clear and unambiguous,” he said. “And it’s not something to be rushed or taken lightly. I’ve not heard evidence proving the president committed bribery or extortion.” Hurd said that he’d like to see Rudy Giuliani, Hunter Biden and the whistleblower subpoenaed. Barring that, he was not going to vote to impeach.

 

Still, Hurd wanted to cling to the idea that he and his party cared about fair elections and defending U.S. national security. “I also reject the notion that holding this view [not to impeach] means supporting all the foreign policy choices we have been hearing over the past few weeks,” Hurd said. “I hope we won’t let this very partisan process keep us from agreeing on how a free and prosperous Ukraine is important to the security of the Ukrainian people, the United States and the rest of the world.” 

Hurd has it right in that last sentence. He has it right. Trump’s selfish interests put our nation’s security at risk. Forget Ukraine entirely if that helps you get to the nub of the matter. 

The President of the United States put the security of his own country at risk and did it for no other reason than to increase his chances of reelection.

 

And Hurd was the best Republican on the panel. By comparison, watching Rep. John Ratcliffe defend President Trump, I couldn’t shake the feeling that, in the era of Adolf Hitler, Ratcliffe would have been happy to follow any orders he received, no matter how inhumane. He displayed the instincts of any functionary, the Adolf Eichmann type, willing to send Jews to die if that’s what superiors said he must do. Rep. Jordan, I could imagine serving Hitler in 1942, just as Reinhard Heydrich had. Jordan had the instincts of a bully, no scruples whatsoever, and no concern for the damage the president was doing. Ranking Member Devin Nunes, of course, would be the Joseph Goebbels of this sorry and ultimately dangerous lot. 

 

“You are dealing with human scum.” 

At almost the same moment Hurd was speaking, a president with no regard for the founding principles on which our nation stands, was attacking another witness, the third time he had done so in two weeks. This time his target was David Holmes. But the best example of Trump at his worst, came when he tweeted this:

Corrupt politician Adam Schiff’s lies are growing by the day. Keep fighting tough, Republicans, you are dealing with human scum who have taken Due Process and all of the Republican Party’s rights away from us during the most unfair hearings in American History......

 

Trump, with his fanatical attacks on political foes, labeling them variously as “treasonous,” “lowlifes,” and now “human scum,” would play the role of Hitler if he could. The Nazi dictator also referred to political foes as “scum.”

 

* 

“Was there a quid pro quo? ... The answer is yes.” 

IT MAY WELL BE TRUE, that no single American managed to watch every hour of televised hearings or read the 3,500 pages of transcribed testimony from closed-door hearings, released so far. And that doesn’t count several thousand pages to come from the televised hearings. So, what did we learn from the witnesses, who came last, on Wednesday and Thursday? 

Watching intently at home, my wife and I were both struck Wednesday, by how “smug” Ambassador Sondland had been. Republicans would later dig three or four sentences out of hours of testimony and insist Sondland cleared the president’s good name. If listened for hours, you knew Sondland was happy to be throwing other members of the administration – and the president – under the bus. In all likelihood, he was feeling a sense of relief, having been painted as the bad guy in the press, up to that point. 

His opening statement said almost all there was to say, although it took hours of back and forth by Democrats and Republicans to parse all the critical points. Republicans did manage to select pieces of his testimony and weave them into what looked, if you squinted hard, like a quilt of many colors to cover up the impeachable offenses of President Trump. If you opened your eyes fully, however, you realized all the Republicans had was a pile of cloth scraps.

 

(President Trump, naturally, called Sondland’s testimony “fantastic,” because Trump is a delusional fool.) 

Here’s the capsule version of the ambassador’s testimony: 

1.     He wasn’t in charge of getting Ukraine to announce an investigation into the Bidens, in return for U.S. military assistance. But it was an “open secret” that that was what the Ukrainians were expected to do if President Zelensky wanted a White House meeting with Trump. 

2.     “Everyone was in the loop,” Sondland said. That included Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence. 

3.     Unless the Ukrainians did the investigation, or at least announced it publicly, Mr. Zelensky, who desperately wanted an in person meeting with the president, was never going to get to see the inside of the Oval Office except on TV. 

4.     “I know that members of this Committee have frequently framed these complicated issues in the form of a simple question: Was there a ‘quid pro quo?’” Sondland said. “As I testified previously, with regard to the requested White House call and White House meeting, the answer is yes.” 

5.     Sondland testified that he and other diplomats were reluctant to work with Rudy Giuliani, but did so at the “express direction of the President of the United States.” 

6.     Who else would have known about this quid pro quo? “Mr. Giuliani conveyed to Secretary Perry, Ambassador Volker, and others that President Trump wanted a public statement from President Zelensky committing to investigations of Burisma and the 2016 election.” 

7.     Giuliani also made this clear to our Ukrainian allies. “We all understood that these prerequisites for the White House call and White House meeting reflected President Trump’s desires and requirements,” Sondland said. 

8.     The real diplomats and the top leadership on the National Security Council all agreed: U.S. national security would be enhanced if we provided Ukraine with military aid. 

9.     It would be harmed if we did not. 

10. Was the long delay in aid tied to Ukrainian unwillingness to get involved in U.S. politics? Sondland said he was “absolutely convinced” it was.

 

So, what scraps of cloth did GOP lawmakers rip from the testimony they had just heard? They honed in on the idea that President Trump had specifically denied to Sondland that there was any quid pro quo. It might walk like a quid pro quo, and quack like a quid pro quo, and all of that. 

None of the Republicans on the panel could see a duck, or loose feathers, duck poop or tracks. 

On September 9, for example, Sondland had talked to Trump by phone and at that point, Trump said, as Sondland testified, there was “no quid pro quo.” Chairman Schiff pointed out that by that time, the White House was aware an investigation was coming. So, the duck was undoubtedly covering its tail. 

Ranking Member Nunes heard quacking sounds, but still insisted the duck was no duck. Unless we heard from the whistleblower first, it was clear that this duck was a fluffy little kitten. 

Rep. Elise Stefanik said the duck was a cow. 

Rep. Jordan screamed at the duck. 

Rep. Hurd’s position boiled down to this: Okay, it walks like a duck. It  quacks like a duck. It has webbed feet like a duck. It has feathers and a bill like a duck. I don’t care. Ducks aren’t so bad. 

By the time Sondland finished testifying, a clear-eyed observer might have thought – mixing our metaphors – that Trump’s goose was cooked. Even a Fox News story on Sondland’s testimony began with these lines: 

The Donald Trump mega-donor who was awarded with an ambassadorship stepped into the impeachment spotlight Wednesday and said the president basically did what Democrats are accusing him of doing [emphasis added throughout].

 

Gordon Sondland, who had already changed his testimony once, delivered a torrent of words, but none more important than these: “Was there a quid pro quo?...The answer is yes.”

 

* 

Ukraine was complying with anti-corruption requirements. 

UNFORTUNATELY, there was no accounting for how low Republican lawmakers were willing to crouch. 

In all the testimony so far, and after all the testimony that followed on Thursday, it would have been simple enough to ask. What had President Trump done right since President Zelensky was elected? Had his actions bolstered a U.S. ally? Had his decision to delay aid delivered a signal to the Russians that they should avoid any renewed aggression? Had the delay in military aid bolstered Ukrainian or U.S. national security? And were his motives in demanding the investigation pure and in the interests of the United States, or even Ukraine,  and not his own? 

The answer to those questions would be: Nothing. No. No. No. Hell no.

 

Wednesday afternoon two more witnesses testified. Ranking Member Nunes kept howling that these witnesses were no good. The only witness he wanted was the whistleblower, whoever he or she might be. 

Again, the duck was there for all to see. Nunes and his GOP colleagues stared at the duck and insisted it was a panda. There were scraps of testimony they could pluck off the pile of to add to their quilt. But the duck was quacking as loudly as it could, as if to say, “QUACK, QUACK, QUACK!!!!!” 

(Translated: “I’m a duck, you fools.”)

 

Laura Cooper, an official at the Department of Defense, offered explanation on several key points. The DOD, she said, certified in May that Ukraine was complying with anti-corruption requirements and determined that military aid should be sent. So that removed at least one critical piece from the GOP Denial Quilt. That would be the idea that the president delayed aid because he was worried about corruption. 

Next, Cooper snatched at another corner of the quilt. She noted that the Ukrainians had contacted her office on July 25, once at 2:31 p.m., again at 4:25 p.m. At that date, they were already wondering about the delay on military aid, calling just a few hours after Trump asked Zelensky to do him a favor. 

She said her office was contacted again, during the week of August 6-10, by Ukrainians wondering what the delay was about. 

Nunes and his gang of duck-deniers had been insisting there could be no “quid pro quo” if the Ukrainians didn’t know the aid was held up.

 

Cooper said that no one in her office knew why the aid was held, but the Ukrainians knew something was up. She said the order to hold came from the White House, by way of Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney. 

As already mentioned, Mulvaney told reporters in no uncertain terms that it was okay to hold up aid in return for a favor.

  

 

David Hale, the third-ranking official at the State Department came to the defense of Ambassador Yovanovitch in his testimony. He described the smear campaign against her, led by Rudy Giuliani and his weird pals (now, mostly indicted) as “wrong.” He said she “should have been able to stay in [her] post and continue to do the outstanding work that she was doing.” Like Ms. Cooper, Hale said experts at State were surprised by the hold on military and other aid to Ukraine. 

 

“It’s certainly not what I would do.” 

Chairman Schiff walked Mr. Hale through this exchange: 

“Would you agree, though, that it would be very unusual to place a hold on military aid to leverage a foreign country to get them to investigate a political opponent?”

 

“Yes,” said Hale.

 

“And I take it you would agree that that would be completely inappropriate,” Schiff said.

 

“That would be inconsistent with the conduct of our foreign policy in general,” Hale replied.

 

“And it’d be wrong, wouldn’t it?” 

 

Hale was careful in all his answers; and, so, he didn’t shout right out: Jesus, it’s a duck.” He did reply like a man who could tell a duck from a dromedary or a donkey: “It’s certainly not what I would do.” 

Cooper also pointed out that there would have been only two legal ways for the Trump administration to withhold the aid. Both would have required that Congress be notified. 

Well, then, what scraps for their quilt could Republicans pluck from the pile? Had either Hale or Cooper ever had direct contact with the president and heard the duck, as it were, speak? Had they heard from his orange bill that aid was held up to pressure the Ukrainians into doing what he asked – that is, announce that an investigation into Joe Biden and son was about to begin? 

Nope, the two witnesses said. Rep. Jim Jordan started shouting that the quilt was now complete. 

So Nunes and his cronies looked at 100 ducks in a row – and noticed two were turned the wrong way. Nunes insisted he didn’t even want to look any more until he could see the whistleblower in line. Rep. Stefanik swore she was seeing aardvarks by the score. Jordan said he couldn’t see anything, not a duck, not a moose, and not an aardvark. Certainly not the U.S. Constitution. 

He preferred to remain willfully blind.

 

* 

 

THURSDAY DAWNED, and two additional witnesses, David Holmes and Dr. Fiona Hill, trudged up to Capitol Hill. 

This would be the last chance for Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee to see the duck:

Ducks, Devin Nunes, you dope!

 

Once testimony began, Mr. Holmes made it clear that he had seen at least one duck and Dr. Hill testified that she had seen ducks all over the pond. Holmes, like most witnesses, was concise in his answers. Dr. Hill went into depth, describing ducks in all their parts, and habits, much to the chagrin of Nunes and his pals, who doubtless wished the floor of the hearing room would open up and swallow the doctor whole. 

At one point, Republican counsel Stephen Castor probed for explanation of Dr. Hill’s differences with Ambassador Sondland. He clearly hoped to plant another seed of doubt. If Hill and Sondland couldn’t agree on the proper path to follow, who was to say Trump hadn’t been right all along. 

Castor quickly regretted inquiring. Dr. Hill admitted having “testy” contacts with Ambassador Sondland. She said at one point she had asked, “Who put you in charge of Ukraine?” 

She said she might have been rude. 

“That’s when he told me, ‘the president,’ which shut me up.” 

In another meeting, she wanted to know why Sondland wasn’t keeping the NSC better informed. He replied, “But I’m briefing the president, I’m briefing Chief of Staff Mulvaney, I’m briefing Secretary Pompeo, and I’ve talked to Ambassador Bolton. Who else do I have to deal with?” 

 

Running a “political errand” for President Trump. 

Now she explained, she had realized something just the day before, in watching Sondland’s testimony. 

And the point is, we have a robust interagency process that deals with Ukraine....It struck me yesterday when you put up on the screen Ambassador Sondland’s emails, and who was on these emails, and he said these are the people who need to know, that he was absolutely right. Because he was being involved in a domestic political errand. And we were being involved in national security [and] foreign policy. And those two things had just diverged.

 

So he was correct, and I had not put my finger on that at the moment. But I was irritated with him and angry with him that he wasn’t fully coordinating. I did say to him, “Ambassador Sondland, Gordon, I fear this is all going to blow up.” And here we are.

 

Now she understood why his actions regarding Ukraine had been so frustrating, and why he seemed to be working at cross purposes with what the National Security Council was trying to achieve. 

He was running a “political errand” for President Trump. 

She and National Security Advisor Bolton, and others were working to implement official U.S. foreign policy. “His [Sondland’s] feeling was that the National Security Council was trying to block him,” Dr. Hill said. What the NSC was really trying to do was “block us [that is the U.S. national security apparatus] from straying into domestic or personal politics. 

But Ambassador Sondland is not wrong that he had been given a different remit than we had been. And then it was at that moment that I realized that those things had diverged, and I realized that I was not being fair to Ambassador Sondland because he was carrying out something that he thought that he was instructed to carry out, and we were doing something that is perhaps more important – but it was not in the same channel. 

 

“A fictional narrative…propagated by Russian security services.” 

During her hours at the witness table Dr. Hill never gave ground under Republican probing. She admitted she’d been afraid at times in her life. She had an interview at Harvard, and she was so nervous beforehand that she walked into a broom closet, instead of the interview room. She had no desire to testify in public; but saw it as her duty. 

Like Lt. Col. Vindman, she was an immigrant, and deeply proud of her adopted country. Her father was a coal miner in England, but she rose from a humble background, earned a PhD. in Russian history, co-authored a book on Putin, and went to work at NSC, first under General H.R. McMaster, later under Bolton. 

A one point, Dr. Hill warned GOP lawmakers, 

Some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country – and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves. The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016.

 

Hill was both impressive and blunt. Do not become “useful idiots,” she told lawmakers, a term the Russians use for useful tools who serve their interests, unwittingly, in foreign lands. 

“Russia’s security services and their proxies have geared up to repeat their interference in the 2020 election,” she warned. “We are running out of time to stop them. In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests.” 

Ranking Member Nunes promptly validated Dr. Hill’s concern, arguing that it was “entirely possible for two separate nations [he meant Russia and Ukraine] to engage in election meddling at the same time, and Republicans believe we should take meddling seriously by all foreign countries.” 

It was almost as if the duck had just landed on the dais in front of him and taken a powerful dump. 

Nunes chose to ignore the stench.

Dr. Fiona Hill.

 

Dr. Hill said it seemed to be her “duty” to testify. “Our nation is being torn apart,” she continued. “Truth is questioned. Our highly professional and expert career foreign service is being undermined.” 

At that point, she might as well have started quacking loudly every time a Republican bothered to question her. The duck was a fucking duck. Nunes and his crew of Trump grovelers didn’t care. 

“We must not let domestic politics stop us from defending ourselves against the foreign powers who truly wish us harm,” she concluded. 

QUACK.

 

Holmes had his turn next. He was not “engaged in U.S. politics in any way,” he noted. “I am an apolitical foreign policy professional, and my job is to focus on the politics of the country in which I serve so that we can better understand the local landscape and better advance U.S. national interests there.” Holmes promised that he would do his best to “stay clear of Washington politics,” in his testimony. 

Still, what the hell had Rudy been doing, you sensed he wanted to say. At one point, as U.S. officials prepared to attend the Zelensky inauguration, Holmes said everyone “wondered aloud about why Mr. Giuliani was so active in the media with respect to Ukraine.” His recollection was that Ambassador Sondland stated, “‘Damn it, Rudy. Every time Rudy gets involved he goes and f**ks everything up.’” 

Was the duck really a duck?

 

“My clear impression was that the security assistance hold was likely intended by the president either as an expression of dissatisfaction that the Ukrainians had not yet agreed to the Burisma/Biden investigation,” Holmes said, “or as an effort to increase the pressure on them to do so.” 

He said he learned from top diplomat Bill Taylor on September 8 that the ‘Three Amigos’ [Sondland, Kurt Volker and Rick Perry; see: 10/18/19] were insisting Zelensky give an interview to CNN to announce investigations. Holmes said he was “shocked the requirement was so specific and concrete.” “This was a demand that President Zelensky personally commit, on a cable news channel, to a specific investigation of President Trump’s political rival,” he continued. 

There was the duck in all its duckness. Holmes could see it, plain as the orange toner Trump slathers on his sagging jowls.

Bad job of applying toner.

 

Despite recent denials by Zelensky and other Ukrainian leaders – who still desire most to stay out of the middle of U.S. politics – they could see the duck themselves. They had already committed to an interview on CNN, to talk about the duck, when the hold on military aid was lifted by a White House under duress. “Although we knew the hold was lifted,” Holmes explained, “we were still concerned that President Zelensky had committed, in exchange for the lifting, to give the requested CNN interview. We had several indications that the interview would occur.” 

Trump was going to get exactly what he wanted. 

Roast duck. 

 

“The importance of staying out of U.S. politics.” 

On September 13, Holmes said, he and Taylor ran into a top aide to Zelensky, Andrey Yermak, coming out of a meeting with Zelensky. 

Ambassador Taylor again stressed the importance of staying out of U.S. politics and said he hoped no interview was planned. Mr. Yermak did not answer, but shrugged in resignation as if to indicate they had no choice. In short, everyone thought there was going to be an interview, and that the Ukrainians believed they had to do it. The interview ultimately did not occur.

 

The duck was quacking loud once more and Nunes had to stick his fingers in his ears to ignore the racket. 

Jordan started yelling again. If the Ukrainians got the aid, just because Trump caved in under duress, then, no harm, no fowl. Plus, had Holmes ever heard the president say there was a quid pro quo. 

“No,” Holmes admitted. 

Jordan looked for someone to high-five, even though his line of defense was ridiculous. A man plotting murder does not announce to strangers, “Hey, I’m going to have my wife killed, in case you were wondering.” 

And if he learns that the police have incriminating text messages, in which he offers a hit man $25,000, but now aborts payment, this does not prove he was innocent of criminal intent.