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.
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.
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.
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