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That would be two fingers, according to Mick Mulvaney. |
10/18/19: George Kent, a career diplomat, appeared next to be grilled by the House panel investigating Trump’s July 25 call. He told lawmakers that as early as 2015, he had concerns about the work Hunter Biden was doing in Ukraine. According to CNN, Kent warned that “it could undercut American efforts to convey to Ukraine the importance of avoiding conflicts of interest.”
Point for Team Trump!!!
____________________
The “drug deal” cooked up
by Rudy and Mick.
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Republicans had little chance to celebrate that news. Kent went on to say that Trump & Co. had made baseless claims against Ambassador Yovanovitch, the woman Giuliani and his now-arrested pals so desperately wanted removed. Even worse, Kent was said to have testified that Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney oversaw a meeting in which regular State Department personnel were sidelined. In their stead, political appointees, Rick Perry, now-resigned, Sondland and Volker would run the show.
“The Three Amigos,” Kent said they dubbed themselves.
(Volker, at least, seems to have had the best interests of Ukraine at heart. Sondland is more problematic.)
Perry? Hard to tell. But money does talk.
And Naftogaz was BIG MONEY. (See: 10/16/19.)
$$$$$$$$$$$
*
A counterintelligence risk to the United States.
KENT WASN’T the only career diplomat to point a finger at Mulvaney. Dr. Fiona Hill – a member of Trump’s National Security Council – testified that her boss, National Security Advisor John Bolton, was so alarmed by the president’s efforts to get Ukrainian officials to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden, that he told her to lodge protest with John Eisenberg, the top lawyer for the NSC.
According to Dr. Hill, who testified next, Bolton referred to Rudy as “a hand grenade” that was going to blow everyone to bits. Bolton wanted no part of the “drug deal,” as he likened it, cooked up by Rudy and Mick, to hold up military aid.
Hill is also reported to have told lawmakers that she considered what was going on to be a counterintelligence risk to the United States.
If the White House hoped for relief, it would have to come when Ambassador Sondland, a longtime, bigtime GOP donor, testified behind closed doors. Most of what he related is still unknown. Rep. Jackie Speier of California, a Democrat, told reporters that Sondland’s remarks were “a lot of C.Y.A.” Even worse – or better, depending on where you stand on the political spectrum – his testimony may have cracked the foundations of the president’s defense. Yovanovitch, for instance, Sondland called “an excellent diplomat.” Her departure, he “regretted.”
As for Giuliani’s role in Ukraine, Sondland was mystified as to why he was there. According to his opening statement, as The New York Times explains,
Mr. Sondland said Mr. Trump refused the counsel of his top
diplomats, who recommended that he meet with the new Ukrainian
president, Volodymyr Zelensky, without any preconditions [emphasis
added, unless otherwise noted]. The president said the diplomats needed to
satisfy concerns that both he and Mr. Giuliani had related to corruption in
Ukraine, Mr. Sondland asserted.
“We were also disappointed by the president’s direction that we
involve Mr. Giuliani,” Mr. Sondland said. “Our view was that the men
and women of the State Department, not the president’s personal lawyer, should
take responsibility for all aspects of U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine.”
“Please know that I would not have recommended that Mr. Giuliani or any private citizen be involved in these foreign policy matters,” Sondland said in his statement to lawmakers. “However, given the president’s explicit direction, as well as the importance we attached to arranging a White House meeting between Presidents Trump and Zelensky, we agreed to do as President Trump directed.”
“I did not understand, until much later,” Sondland added, “that Mr. Giuliani’s agenda might have also included an effort to prompt the Ukrainians to investigate Vice President Biden or his son or to involve Ukrainians, directly or indirectly, in the president’s 2020 re-election campaign.”
Sondland was clearly
indicating that the main charge that could lead to impeachment was true.
*
“No question…That’s why we held up the money.”
BY SOME COSMIC MISCHANCE, Mick Mulvaney appeared before reporters around the same time Sondland was testifying. The only way to explain Mulvaney’s performance is to assume that he knew, via leaks from GOP lawmakers, that what Sondland was saying was undermining the president’s defense.
That meant Mulvaney had to no choice but to go out and defend the indefensible – to admit that part of the damning story was true – but not the most damning part.
Mulvaney admitted that military aid to the Ukraine was held up because the White House wanted cooperation in what he insisted was a legitimate investigation by the Department of Justice. It was, he added, the president’s prerogative to conduct diplomacy in any fashion he pleased.
(In short order, the DOJ went out of its way to rebut Mulvaney’s claim. “If the White House was withholding aid from Ukraine with regard to any investigation by the Justice Department, that’s news to us,” a DOJ spokesperson said.)
It didn’t matter, Mulvaney argued, if Team Trump was pushing the Ukrainians to investigate matters related to the 2016 campaign. See! The president wasn’t soliciting information to help him in 2020!
Trump only wanted to clean up corruption. He only wanted to know what had happened three years ago, even if investigating the Biden family would help next year. “I have news for everybody,” Mulvaney told the gathered reporters, thumping his lectern, “Get over it. There’s going to be political influence in foreign policy.” To sum up, he added, “Elections have consequences. This happens all the time.”
What about the holdup of U.S. military assistance? Mulvaney
was clear. There were “three issues,” involved. He held up three fingers, while
cameras rolled, and ticked them off. First, there was the fear of ongoing
corruption in the Ukraine. Second, there was frustration because other European
governments weren’t helping Ukraine more. Third, was the president’s demand
that the Ukrainians investigate the issue, from 2016, of the Democratic
National Committee server.
“Did he also mention to me in passing the corruption related to the D.N.C. server?” Mulvaney said, referring to the president. “Absolutely. No question about that. That’s why we held up the money.”
So, there it was.
Trump held up military aid to force Ukraine to investigate some nutty right-wing conspiracy theory. Essentially, that would be the theory that Ukraine, not Russia, was involved in the 2016 theft of emails from the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Therefore, proving that Trump never had Russian help in his election.
Mulvaney wasn’t done. Asked if what George Kent said was true (that Mulvaney set up a meeting to put three political appointees in charge of diplomacy), Mulvaney played dumb. World-class dumb. He said he had no idea who Kent was. Didn’t think he’d ever talked to the man. Several times, when reporters pressed, Mick couldn’t recall who U.S. diplomats were.
The casual observer had to wonder if he’d been ingesting illegal drugs for breakfast.
What about all the testimony from diplomats that seemed to confirm everything the whistleblower had said?
How did Mulvaney explain that?
“What you’re seeing now I believe,” he grumbled, “is a group of mostly career bureaucrats who are saying, ‘You know what, I don’t like President Trump’s politics, so I’m going to participate in this witch hunt that they are undertaking on the Hill.’”
Besides, who were you going to believe? A bunch of “career bureaucrats?”
Or career politicians, like Mulvaney?
And Rudy, whose four pals were under arrest?
And Trump! Did reporters – and through them, the American people – really believe Donald J.
Trump would lie about all of this –
just because he had lied about everything else since taking
office?
If Mulvaney’s performance was jaw-droppingly awful, it wasn’t long before he tried a do-over. A few hours later he issued a statement, “clarifying” what he had said.
Once again, the media has
decided to misconstrue my comments to advance a biased and political witch hunt
against President Trump. Let me be clear, there was absolutely no quid pro quo
between Ukrainian military aid and any investigation into the 2016 election.
The president never told me to withhold any money until the Ukrainians did
anything related to the server.
Only Mulvaney did say what he said. He absolutely said the Ukrainians had to investigate, or Trump would freeze aid.
Get over it.
Mulvaney later appeared on Fox News; but his host was Chris Wallace, not some stooge. That meant he ran into a buzz saw of questions. Mulvaney tried to claim he never listed three reasons Trump held up the military aid. There were only two, and he ticked them off for Wallace again – leaving out any mention of an investigation of the Biden family or any other issue from 2016.
Wallace said he was wrong and absolutely had said that there
were three.
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Ukraine “lives in the shadow of Russia.”
SO, WAS THERE a quid pro quo or wasn’t there? Some days back, Sen. Ron Johnson told the Wall Street Journal that he had been told of a possible quid pro quo by Ambassador Sondland. Johnson said he pressed Trump about the matter in a phone call. “He said...‘No way. I would never do that. Who told you that?’”
Sen. Johnson told everyone he believed Trump; but up on Capitol Hill, Sondland was testifying that he had suspected there was a quid pro quo, just as he warned the senator before. Johnson appeared on Chuck Todd’s Sunday morning show and insisted that he had been mixed up when he talked to the Wall Street Journal. Now he believed Trump, and insisted that the president had “vehemently,” “adamantly” denied any quid pro quo. And, yes, the free press was mean and biased, and he, a two-bit politician, and the president, a liar at retail, would never have biases of their own.
Like a chain-reaction wreck on a fog-enshrouded interstate, the president’s problems continued to pile up like smashed cars and trucks. A Fox News poll indicated that 51 percent of Americans supported impeachment and removal of the president. Newsweek reported that 58 percent in another poll agreed with the statement that Trump had definitely or probably done things that were “grounds for impeachment.” Former Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, a Republican, agreed. It was Mulvaney’s admission that military aid had been withheld, he explained, that tipped him to that conclusion.
There
was no excuse, Kasich said, not when Ukraine “lives in the shadow of Russia,
that’s got troops on their land.”
Kasich was not the only Republican willing to express public concern. There were reports that many were privately appalled. Maryland Governor Larry Hogan joined in support of the inquiry. “I don’t see any other way to get the facts,” he said.
Having listened to Mulvaney, Sen. Lisa Murkowski made her disgust clear. “You don’t hold up foreign aid that we [Congress] had previously appropriated for a political initiative. Period.”
Maine Republican, Bill Cohen, one of seven on the House Judiciary Committee to vote for the impeachment of President Nixon in 1974, went a step further. “I believe the effort to obtain damaging information from a foreign government on a potential presidential candidate, and contemporaneously withholding needed military equipment would constitute an impeachable offense,” he told the Bangor Daily News.
Rep. Francis Rooney was the next GOP member in Congress to say he supported an impeachment inquiry. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, of Illinois, joined him. Neither said they had their minds made. Both believed an investigation was warranted. “I’ve been real mindful of the fact that during Watergate, all the people I knew said, ‘Oh, they’re just abusing Nixon, and it’s a witch hunt,’” Rooney explained. “Turns out it wasn’t a witch hunt. It was absolutely correct. I’m definitely at variance with some of the people in [my] district who would probably follow Donald Trump off the Grand Canyon rim.”
For his part, he said, he had sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution. His loyalty was not to one man.
The next day, Rooney announced that after two terms in the House, he would not run for reelection.
Still, we’ve always got Rep. Duncan Hunter of
California – at least until his trial. And,
hey, Jim Jordan!
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Ready to jump for Trump. |
BLOGGER’S NOTE (4/28/22): In the process of editing my blog, I should note here: Hunter Biden had no business serving on the board of a Ukrainian company, and being paid, basically, for his family name.
That doesn’t mean Rick Perry, Rudy Giuliani, Lev Parnas, Igor Fruman, and a host of other Trump-affiliated galoots weren’t trying to cash in on the exact kind of connections.
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