October 18, 2019: Mick Mulvaney Holds Up Three Fingers - Claims He Held Up Two

 

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.

____________________ 

 

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.

 

* 

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!

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.

October 22, 2019: A Parade of Witnesses Has Implicated President Trump - Trump Fans Won't Care

 

10/22/19: If Trump was already having a bad month, Tuesday was his worst day yet. (Or, the best day for this country in almost three years.) 

On Tuesday, another U.S. diplomat marched up to Capitol Hill to testify behind closed doors. What leaked, and what he said in his 15-page opening statement, which was available to the press, must have made the president poop his pajamas. That veteran diplomat, Bill Taylor, was chosen by Mike Pompeo to replace the previous U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, who Trump went out of his way to dump. 

Call it karma.

If you heard the witnesses this week, you would BE concerned.

 

____________________ 

“If Bill Taylor says it happened, it happened.” 

Steven Pifer

____________________

 

 

If you aren’t following testimony in the impeachment inquiry, let’s just say that what’s leaking isn’t making Trump sound like a saint. The president’s staunchest defenders are outraged. Why are witnesses testifying behind closed doors! How dare Democrats leak damaging details! Why hasn’t Speaker Pelosi called for an official impeachment vote! Trump himself has called the inquiry a “kangaroo court.” He’s not going to cooperate. Lawmakers can’t make him. 

 

This created a national security threat. 

Still, the witnesses keep parading before Congress, and not one has defended the president so far. 

Here’s the capsule version. Yovanovitch indicated that she ran afoul of Rudy Giuliani, who wanted her canned. Rudy wanted her booted, she says, because she opposed his efforts to get the Ukrainians to investigate the Bidens. She also warned Rudy that the guys he was working with in Ukraine might be crooks. 

George Kent testified that he had concerns about what Hunter Biden was doing in Ukraine. But he was more concerned by what he saw as a White House effort to sideline regular diplomats and create an alternative channel of communication to Ukrainian leaders. And he couldn’t figure out what Rudy was up to – or why the Trump administration was delaying military aid. 

Kurt Volker resigned as soon as his name turned up in the first whistleblower’s complaint. The whistleblower reported that Volker and Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland spoke with Giuliani “in an attempt to ‘contain the damage’” he was doing to U.S. national security. 

Volker, whose motives seem legit, told lawmakers that Giuliani and his pals were running a “shadow shakedown” in the Ukraine. 

Dr. Fiona Hill testified that her boss, John Bolton, referred to Rudy as “a hand grenade” who was going to blow everyone to bits. She considered what was going on, the interference with military aid, and the demand for Ukraine to investigate the Bidens, to represent a counterintelligence risk to the United States.

 

Ambassador Sondland seemed to tap dance around responsibility for any of the mess. He did defend Yovanovitch. He said that he and Volker agreed that President Trump should take a meeting with the President of Ukraine without precondition. Only later did he realize that Rudy 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 [emphasis added].” 

Trump took another right hook to the jaw when Michael McKinney, a top adviser to Secretary of State Pompeo, resigned and appeared voluntarily before the House Intelligence Committee. His opening statement makes his position clear: 

The timing of my resignation was the result of two overriding concerns: the failure, in my view, of the State Department to offer support to Foreign Service employees caught up in the Impeachment Inquiry on Ukraine; and, second, by what appears to be the utilization of our ambassadors overseas to advance domestic political objectives [emphasis added].

 

I was disturbed by the implication that foreign governments were being approached to procure negative information on [the president’s] political opponents. I was convinced that this would also have a serious impact on foreign service morale and the integrity of our work overseas.

 

In other words, Sondland and McKinney thought there was a quid pro quo. Dr. Hill thought so, too. This created a national security threat. Kurt Volker thought Rudy’s efforts, and the hold put on military aid, were a security threat. George Kent worried about Hunter Biden’s work but wanted to make it clear he thought it was fishy that regular diplomats were being pushed aside. Ms. Yovanovitch wasn’t sure what had happened to her, or why, and left Ukraine before the diplomatic doo hit the fan. She believed the people Giuliani was working with were kind of sleazy.

 

* 

BY THE TIME Ambassador Bill Taylor arrived to testify, Team Trump appeared to be on the ropes. 

From what we know – and Republicans remain outraged because witnesses are appearing behind closed doors – and maybe not so much because of what they are saying while they’re there – Taylor may have knocked the president down for a nine-count. In fact, there would seem to be an excellent chance, that when Chairman Schiff finally decides he has enough evidence to open hearings to the public, the friends of President Trump will be sorry they asked. 

We know Taylor had a distinguished career as diplomat. He left public service some years back. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo convinced him to return last spring and take the job as charge d’affaires to Ukraine. Taylor is a West Point graduate and served during the Vietnam War. 

He was a company commander in the 101^st Airborne Division and was awarded a Bronze Star. 

In 2006, President George W. Bush chose him to be Ambassador to Ukraine, and he served for three years, until President Obama replaced him with an ambassador of his own. At age 72, when Pompeo asked, Taylor was reluctant to return. A Republican mentor helped change his mind. 

“If your country asks you to do something, you do it—if you can be effective,” Taylor testified his mentor said.

 

As for character, Taylor would be a hard man for Trump fans to attack. (But, as we shall see, they do.) A veteran diplomat from the Bush administration described him as “a person of integrity with a strong, ethical base.” A former ambassador to the Soviet Union agreed. “You couldn’t ask for a more credible, universally respected, upright public servant to testify on the facts of this case.” Steven Pifer, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, was even more confidant in what Taylor might say. “If Bill Taylor says it happened, it happened,” he told reporters. 

So, what did Taylor tell lawmakers on Wednesday? First, we learn that he’s a meticulous notetaker. He said he shared his notes with the State Department, which refused to turn them over to congressional panels involved in the inquiry. Taylor kept a copy for himself. 

It didn’t take long for Ambassador Taylor to start ringing alarm bells. In the first three paragraphs of his opening statement he explained who he was. He was a Vietnam veteran, a career diplomat with fifty years of experience, a man who had served every U.S. president since 1985.

 

In his fourth paragraph he rang the first bell. 

While I have served in many places and in different capacities, I have a particular interest in and respect for the importance of our country’s relationship with Ukraine. Our national security demands that this relationship remain strong, However, in August and September of this year, I became increasingly concerned that our relationship with Ukraine was being fundamentally undermined by an irregular, informal channel of U.S. policy-making and by the withholding of vital security assistance for domestic political reasons [emphasis added].

 

That would be another vote for: “Yes, there was a quid pro quo.” 

 

“Whole, free, democratic, and at peace.” 

Nor did Taylor feel that the U.S. could afford to ruin its relationship with Ukraine. In his fifth paragraph, he explained: 

First, Ukraine is a strategic partner of the United States, important for the security of our country as well as Europe. Second, Ukraine is, right at this moment – while we sit in this room – and for the last five years, under armed attack from Russia. Third, the security assistance we provide is crucial to Ukraine’s defense against Russian aggression, and, more importantly, sends a signal to Ukrainians – and Russians – that we are Ukraine’s reliable strategic partner. And finally, as the Committees are now aware, I said on September 9 in a message to Ambassador Gordon Sondland that withholding security assistance in exchange for help with a domestic political campaign in the United States would be “crazy.”

 

If Ukraine could break free of Russian influence, he continued, it would be “possible for Europe to be whole, free, democratic, and at peace.” An American president could stand by Ukraine and shape a better world. 

Taylor arrived in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, on June 17, 2019. He was carrying a letter from Mr. Trump, inviting Mr. Zelensky to meet in the White House. What Taylor discovered on arrival was “a weird combination of encouraging, confusing, and ultimately alarming circumstances.” He was encouraged by Zelensky’s desire to root out corruption. He was confused to find there were two diplomatic tracks at work, one “highly irregular,” on which Rudy Giuliani ran the train. 

At first, Taylor said, all the American principals agreed a meeting between Trump and Zelensky would benefit both nations. As other witnesses had made clear, he too said he soon realized Rudy was tearing up the regular diplomatic rails. If Zelensky hoped to meet with Trump, he was going to have to push “the investigation of Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.” By July 10, Taylor was hearing from top Ukrainian officials who said Giuliani had told them a phone call between the two leaders was not going to happen. 

Unless.

 

They told Taylor they were “disappointed and alarmed.” Eight days later, he heard another U.S. official say that “there was a hold on security assistance to Ukraine but could not say why.” 

The picture emerging was damning to President Trump and Lawyer Rudy, in the extreme. So, Republicans fell back on arguing that what Taylor was saying was “thirdhand hearsay.” 

And some of it was. 

And most of it wasn’t. 

 

“Contrary to the goals of longstanding U.S. policy.” 

Taylor’s opening statement continued. During one “otherwise normal meeting,” he and other diplomats listened to a “voice” on a conference call. Who was speaking, he did not know: 

…the person was off-screen – said that she was from OMB [Office of Management and Budget] and that her boss had instructed her not to approve any additional spending of security assistance for Ukraine until further notice. I and others sat in astonishment – the Ukrainians were fighting the Russians and counted on not only the training and weapons, but also the assurance of U.S. support. All that the OMB staff person said was that the directive had come from the President to the Chief of Staff [Mick Mulvaney] to OMB. In an instant, I realized that one of the key pillars of our strong support for Ukraine was threatened. The irregular policy channel was running contrary to the goals of longstanding U.S. policy.

 

A series of high-level discussions followed. According to Taylor, “the unanimous conclusion” was that military aid should be resumed. There should be no conditions attached. The Department of Defense was in favor. 

(Taylor had been keeping painstaking notes.)

 

Subsequently, other U.S. diplomats and government officials told Taylor that the hold on military aid and the hold on any meeting between the two presidents had to do with White House insistence on certain “investigations.” In one meeting, Taylor was told, National Security Advisor Bolton (Taylor mistakenly called him “Ambassador Bolton” in his opening remarks), became so upset over the hold, that he terminated discussion. Bolton told Hill, who told Taylor, that he wanted no part of the “drug deal” White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and Giuliani were cooking up. “Bolton” now opposed a call between the two leaders “out of concern that it ‘would be a disaster.’”

 

In a conversation with Mr. Sondland on July 20, Sondland told Taylor he had recommended a phrase for Zelensky to use if he did talk to Trump. “I will leave no stone unturned,” he was to say, in pursuing the investigations Trump so much wanted. 

It was all about Biden, father, and son. 

Taylor was not in on the critical call between the presidents on July 25. Everything he says he had heard previous witnesses had verified. 

Shortly thereafter, Volker and Taylor traveled to the front lines, where sporadic fighting still flares almost every day. Looking across a damaged bridge, where a river separated the two sides, Taylor could see heavily-armed Russian forces. He thought of the 13,000 Ukrainian dead. “More Ukrainians would undoubtedly die without the U.S. assistance,” he realized at that moment. 

That was how he explained it to lawmakers.

 

By late August, his concern had intensified. Military assistance had been on hold for weeks. On August 27, Bolton flew to Kyiv to talk to Zelensky. Taylor spoke to Bolton about his worries. Bolton recommended sending a first-person cable to Secretary of State Pompeo. Taylor did. 

A top Ukrainian official asked him about the aid delay on August 29. 

“At that point,” Taylor testified, “I was embarrassed that I could give him no explanation for why it was withheld.” 

“It had still not occurred to me that the hold on security assistance could be related to the ‘investigations.’ That, however, would soon change,” he told the House Intelligence Committee. On September 1, he was told that Sondland had warned the Ukrainians that “the security assistance money would not come until President Zelenskyy committed to pursue the Burisma investigation.”  

So, was there a quid pro quo? 

 

Everything, including security assistance, was dependent. 

We knew from earlier testimony, that Sondland had assured Taylor in an email that Trump said there were no quid pro quos. But Taylor told lawmakers, Sondland went on to admit that there were. President Zelensky would have to announce he was investigating Joe Biden and his son or forget any military assistance. “Ambassador Sondland said that ‘everything’ was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance,” Taylor explained. 

“He said that President Trump wanted President Zelensky ‘in a public box’ by making a public statement about ordering such investigations.” Other diplomats made it clear that Trump was adamant. The president claimed he wasn’t asking for a quid pro quo. But, as Taylor described it, he was insisting “that President Zelenskyy go to a microphone and say he is opening investigations of Biden and 2016 election interference.” On September 8  Sondland told Taylor,  that the U.S. and Ukraine were in a “stalemate.” Zelensky would have to “clear things up” in public. 

“I understood a ‘stalemate’ to mean that Ukraine would not receive the much-needed military assistance,” Taylor told the committee, until the Ukrainians committed to what amounted to interference in the next U.S. election. 

And that’s all we knew, by Tuesday afternoon.

 

* 

TAYLOR MIGHT BE a decorated war hero and a man of unflinching integrity and courage, according to peers. Yet, by Tuesday evening, White House Press Lacky Stephanie Grisham, was out with a statement. In it, she bashed Taylor and the other witnesses, including those who Trump had chosen to fill their posts. Grisham insisted that the president had “done nothing wrong.” 

The witnesses were part of “a coordinated smear campaign from far-left lawmakers and radical unelected bureaucrats waging war on the Constitution.”

November 7, 2019: Trump Wanted Zelensky in a Box - The Quid and the Quo

 

11/7/19: The President of the United States rises from bed, already in a black mood. He’s so depressed he doesn’t even feel like eating his Cocoa Puffs for breakfast. The fact he is about to be impeached has finally penetrated his thick skull. 

Well, then, what to do? 

Why not attack the free press!

The Washington Post has just reported that Trump asked Attorney General Bill Barr to announce that his call with the Ukrainians was perfect, the stuff of legend, and no one should bother to run against Trump in 2020. Because Trump is at the tippy-top of the best of the best. 

According to sources at the Department of Justice, reporters for the Post say this was a bridge too far for Barr.

 

____________________ 

“I and the others on the call sat in astonishment. The Ukrainians were fighting the Russians and counted on not only the training and weapons but also the assurance of U.S. support.” 

Ambassador Bill Taylor

____________________

 

Clearly feeling the pressure, Trump explodes in a series of fiery tweets. Sounding like Vladimir Putin, but not in such good shape, the orange doughball refers to the free press as “the Enemy of the People.” 

Then he insists, “Bill Barr did not decline my request to talk about Ukraine. The story was a Fake Washington Post con job with an ‘anonymous’ source that doesn’t exist. Just read the Transcript,” he says. “The Justice Department already ruled that the [July 25] call was good. We don’t have freedom of the press!” 

Actually, we do. But we might not for much longer, if the crazy man in the White House keeps this up. 

If he wins reelection, we’re screwed.

 

The next tweet is worse, with Trump using a word to describe the free press he normally reserves for the leaders of ISIS: “The degenerate Washington Post MADE UP the story about me asking Bill Barr to hold a news conference,” he says. “Never happened, and there were no sources!” 

Finally, he names names. 

The Amazon Washington Post and three lowlife reporters, Matt Zapotosky, Josh Dawsey, and Carol Leonnig, wrote another Fake News story, without any sources (pure fiction), about Bill Barr & myself. We both deny this story, which they knew before they wrote it. A garbage newspaper!

 

That’s dictator talk.

 

* 

ABC ALMOST immediately reports that several sources have confirmed the report. Trump did ask Barr. 

CBS confirms the story next. “There is no evidence of Barr denying the story,” CBS points out. 

Even Fox News admits that the Wall Street Journal has verified the Post story. Or, to put it plainly, even Fox reporters suspect Trump is lying. They just don’t want to say it and upset their viewers.

 

* 

“Thank you to Tim Morrison for your honesty.” 

YOU CAN SEE why Trump might be losing his grip if you’ve been following the release of witness testimonies. As of Thursday morning, the transcripts of Tim Morrison’s testimony are unavailable. But his full opening statement is out. Morrison was one of the National Security Council officials who sat in on the July 25 call at the center of the impeachment inquiry. 

He did say during testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, “I want to be clear, I was not concerned that anything illegal was discussed.” 

The president heard that sentence, which Republicans leaked as soon as Morrison spoke it, and leaped on it like a lion dragging a baby zebra down by its neck. “Thank you to Tim Morrison for your honesty,” he tweeted on October 31.

 

Now we know Morrison went on to admit he had a “sinking feeling” when he learned that Trump was asking the Ukrainians to publicly announce an investigation of Biden and the Democrats. And, what about the testimony of Ambassador Taylor? Taylor was clear in saying that the fix – the quid pro quo – was in. “I can confirm,” Morrison said, that the substance of Taylor’s testimony “is accurate.” “It is easy to forget here in Washington,” he continued, “but impossible in Kyiv [Kiev], that Ukraine is still under armed assault by Russia….United States security sector assistance (from the Department of Defense and State) is therefore, essential to Ukraine.” 

He also testified that soon after joining the National Security Council, Dr. Fiona Hill warned him that Ambassador Gordon Sondland “and President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, were trying to get President Zelensky to reopen Ukrainian investigations into Burisma.” Morrison says he had to Google “Burisma,” and learned that “it was a Ukrainian energy company and that Hunter Biden was on its board. I also did not understand,” he said, “why Ambassador [to the European Union] Sondland would be involved in Ukraine policy, often without the involvement of our duly-appointed Chief of Mission, Ambassador Bill Taylor.” 

In other words (and “thank you for your honesty”), even Mr. Morrison smelled something noxious was brewing.

 

Morrison, like Taylor, made this fundamental point. No military aid was coming until the Ukrainians committed to one special investigation, involving Burisma, a company Hunter Biden used to advise. 

Still, Morrison did say he did not think the president’s comments during the July 25 call were illegal. 

Republican lawmakers probably wish they could have hit Morrison with a tranquilizer dart at that moment. Morrison kept talking. “I was not aware that the White House was holding up the security sector assistance passed by Congress until my superior, Dr. Charles Kupperman, told me soon after I succeeded Dr. Hill [who stepped down in mid-July].” In other words, he wouldn’t have known about the second quid pro quo till August, himself. He also said he wasn’t as worried about the call as others who listened in, because (at the time) he was confident the Secretaries of State and Defense, the Director of the C.I.A. and the head of the NSC, would step up. They would be able to “convince President Trump to release the aid because President Zelensky and the reform-oriented Rada [parliament] were genuinely invested in their anti-corruption agenda.” 

Morrison said that he had “no reason to believe the Ukrainians had any knowledge” of the holdup of military aide until August 28.

 

He and Ambassador Taylor, he said, “had no reason to believe that that release of military aid might be conditioned on a public statement [emphasis added throughout, unless otherwise noted] reopening the Burisma investigation” until he talked with Sondland on September 1. He relayed word to Taylor. Republicans, including Trump, fixated on that comment – insisting there could be no quid pro quo, unless the Ukrainians knew what the quid and the quo were. But Morrison added, “Even then I hoped that Ambassador Sondland’s strategy was exclusively his own and would not be considered by leaders in the Administration and Congress, who understood the strategic importance of Ukraine to our national security.” 

There’s the main point: Holding up military assistance to our Ukrainian allies endangered U.S. national security.

 

* 

“Full of lies and incorrect information.” 

PRESIDENT TRUMP’S defenses suffer a pair of devastating hits later the same day when transcripts of Ambassador Bill Taylor’s and top State Department official George Kent’s testimonies, 324 pages and 355 pages in length, are released. Kent lambasts Rudy Giuliani for mucking around in Ukraine. Starting in March, Trump’s personal lawyer was “unmissable” in Ukrainian affairs. Rudy was working with Yuriy Lutsenko, a former top Ukrainian official, who wanted “revenge” for U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch’s anti-corruption efforts.  

Kent was telling lawmakers that Rudy wanted to ditch a diplomat who was fighting corruption. He wasn’t working to fight corruption, as Trump and his lackeys insist. “Mr. Giuliani, at that point, had been carrying on a campaign for several months full of lies and incorrect information about Ambassador Yovanovitch,” Kent explained, “so this was a continuation of his campaign of lies.” 

As USA Today explained, Kent told lawmakers that Giuliani and his shady friends were pushing four story lines. First, they were trying to sell the idea that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, not Russia. Second, was the line that Ukrainians and people at the U.S. embassy had an “animus” toward Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chair. (That’s right, the guy currently ensconced in a federal prison.) A third line held that it was Vice President Biden’s pressure to fire Ukraine’s top prosecutor in 2015 that saved his son, Hunter, and Burisma, from investigation. Finally, George Soros was mixed up in the mess and working against Mr. Trump. 

(Cue the anti-Semitism, where Mr. Soros is concerned.)

 

Kent, however, made it clear he had no faith in the sources Rudy was using, describing them as “if not entirely made up in full cloth, it was primarily non-truths and non-sequiturs.” 

As USA Today describes it, Kent, 

…told Catherine Croft, a special adviser for Ukraine who has also testified, that “if you’re asking me, have we ever gone to the Ukrainians and asked them to investigate or prosecute individuals for political reasons, the answer is, I hope we haven’t, and we shouldn’t because that goes against everything that we are trying to promote in post-Soviet states for the last 28 years, which is the promotion of the rule of law.”

 

Kent reiterated that he thought the idea of using the desired investigations as leverage was “injurious to the rule of law.”

 

Kent did say he was concerned about the optics of Hunter Biden and his work in Ukraine in 2015 – apparently the only sentence in more than 300 pages of testimony that any Republican lawmakers heard. 

Kent was perfectly clear. 

He testified that Trump wanted “nothing less than President Zelensky to go to microphone and say investigations, Biden, and Clinton.” 

Quid fucking pro quo.

 

* 

THE PRESIDENT, as all his loyal fans know, has been swearing that there was no quid pro quo. He never asked the Ukrainians to investigate the Biden family if they wanted a meeting at the White House. 

Nor did he ever make it clear, nor Rudy, either, that if Ukraine expected military aid, they would have to agree to investigate Hunter and Joe. Who could imagine President Trump would stoop so low! 

When we read the transcript of the testimony of Ambassador Taylor, we know who would imagine. 

Ambassador Taylor, for sure.

 

Assuming you’re retired and have hours of free time (as this blogger is and does), it’s interesting to dive into the records. One notices, first, that GOP lawmakers involved in the questioning, only want to complain. Chairman Schiff is mean to be holding the hearings behind closed doors. How will the public ever learn what witnesses have to say? At one point, Rep. Chip Roy of Texas declares, “This whole hearing is out of order.” 

Rep. Val Demings, a Maryland Democrat retorts, “You really don’t want to hear from this witness, do you?” 

Roy insists he does. He says he wants every member of Congress to hear the witness and that he wants the American people to hear too. Now he should be content, since all one needs do is go to the link provided here, and plow through all 324 pages of Taylor’s testimony. And since few people are going to do that plowing – including Sen. Lindsey Graham – here’s a summary. 

First, Taylor lays out his background: West Point graduate, infantry officer in Vietnam. Bronze Star for valor. He tells lawmakers he has had a “non-partisan,” fifty-year career in government. As a diplomat he did stints in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, and a previous tour in Ukraine. He had, he explains, an abiding interest in Ukrainian affairs. “However, in August and September of this year,” he testified, “I became increasingly concerned that our relationship with Ukraine was being fundamentally undermined by an irregular, informal channel of U.S. policymaking and by the withholding of vital security assistance for domestic political reasons.”

 

For slow readers, like Rep. Devin Nunes, this was Taylor making clear the Ukrainians were being asked to interfere in a U.S. political campaign. 

That would be a future campaign. 

As in 2020.

 

That is, a QUID PRO QUO.

 

Soon after arriving in Ukraine, Taylor began sniffing out trouble. On June 27, Sondland told him that “President Zelensky needed to make clear to President Trump that he, President Zelensky, was not standing in the way of investigations.” The next day, Taylor said he “sensed something odd” when Sondland said he wanted to limit participation in a phone call to Zelensky. 

Ambassador Sondland, Ambassador [Kurt] Volker, Secretary [of Energy Rick] Perry, and I were on this call dialing in from different locations. However, Ambassador Sondland said that he wanted to make sure no one was transcribing or monitoring as they added President Zelensky to the call. Also, before President Zelensky joined the call, Ambassador Volker separately told the U.S. participants that he, Ambassador Volker, planned to be explicit with President Zelensky in a one-on-one meeting in Toronto on July 2nd about what President Zelensky should do to get the meeting in the White House.

 

Again, it was not clear to me on that call what this meant, but Ambassador Volker noted that he would relay that President Trump wanted to see rule of law, transparency, but also, specifically, cooperation on investigations to get to the bottom of things…

 

By mid-July, it was becoming clear to me that the meeting President Zelensky wanted was conditioned on investigations of Burisma and alleged Ukrainian influence in the 2016 elections. It was also clear that this condition was driven by the irregular policy channel I had come to understand was guided by Mr. Giuliani.

 

(BLOGGER’S NOTE: Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee will later stress that Taylor had no direct knowledge of what was said on several calls, including the July 25 conversation that touched off the inquiry. Testimony by Vindman and Hill, however, will validate every statement Taylor has made.)

 

On Fox News, presidential ass smoocher Gregg Jarrett will label those who gave testimony  “opinion witnesses” and “notorious gossipers.” In the real world, where Taylor testified, he had already said: 

On July 10, in Kyiv [Kiev], I met with President Zelensky’s Chief of Staff, Andrei Bohdan, and then-foreign policy adviser to the President and now Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko, who told me that they had heard from Mr. Giuliani that the phone call between the two Presidents was unlikely to happen and that they were alarmed and disappointed.

 

That’s direct knowledge there, and the Ukrainians are already aware that something is amiss. 

During a conference call on July 18, Taylor added, a “voice” from a woman at Office of Management and Budget announced that all military aid to Ukraine was on hold “until further notice.” The reaction of the people listening, he says, was pronounced. “I and the others on the call sat in astonishment. The Ukrainians were fighting the Russians and counted on not only the training and weapons but also the assurance of U.S. support.” 

Unbeknownst to our top diplomat in Ukraine, someone was screwing with military aid to an ally.

 

According to that OMB voice, the directive to hold up aid had come directly from President Trump, via Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney. “In an instant,” Taylor told lawmakers, “I realized that one of the key pillars of our strong support for Ukraine was threatened.” 

Was the delay in aid wise? 

“At one point the Defense Department was asked to perform an analysis of the effectiveness of the assistance,” Taylor explained. “Within a day, the Defense Department came back with the determination that the assistance was effective and should be resumed.”

 

On July 19, Taylor spoke with Dr. Hill and Lt. Col. Vindman. Both told him that the hold on military aid came from Mulvaney. 

In the same July 19th phone call, they gave me an account of the July 10th meeting with the Ukrainian officials at the White House. Specifically, they told me that Ambassador Sondland had connected investigations with an Oval Office meeting for President Zelensky, which so irritated Ambassador Bolton that he abruptly ended the meeting, telling Dr . Hill and Mr. Vindman that they should have nothing to do with domestic politics.

 

“Needless to say, the two Ukrainians in the meetings,” Taylor says, “were confused.”

 

Did the Ukrainians realize that they were being required to help President Trump in the next election? Taylor is clear: 

Also, on July 20th, I had a phone conversation with Mr. Danyliuk, during which he conveyed to me that President Zelensky did not want to be used as a pawn in a U.S. reelection campaign. The next day, I texted both Ambassadors Volker and Sondland about President Zelensky’s concern.

 

National Security Advisor Bolton flew to Kiev on August 27. Taylor spoke with him about his concerns, and the “folly I saw in withholding military aid to Ukraine at a time when hostilities were still active in the east and when Russia was watching closely to gauge the level of American support for the Ukrainian Government.” 

Bolton suggested he send a cable directly to Secretary of State Pompeo. This was something Taylor had never done in his career. Taylor did so, making it clear he might resign. By this time, we can safely assume, Trump also knew diplomats and intelligence experts were on to his game. 

On September 1, Pence met with Zelensky in Poland. According to the official readout, the Ukrainian leader “opened the meeting by asking the Vice President about security cooperation.” In other words, our allies were clearly worried about the inexplicable delay in military assistance. 

In his sworn testimony, Taylor also said he spoke with Tim Morrison, a member of the National Security Council. Morrison “went on to describe a conversation Ambassador Sondland had with Mr. Yermak at Warsaw. Ambassador Sondland told Mr. Yermak that the security assistance money would not come until President Zelensky committed to pursue the Burisma investigation. 

 

“President Trump wanted President Zelensky in a box.” 

Here, then, we come to Taylor’s most definitive statement. Was there a quid pro quo? 

I was alarmed by what Mr. Morrison told me about the Sondland-Yermak conversation. This was the first time I had heard that security assistance, not just the White House meeting, was conditioned on the investigations.

 

Very concerned, on that same day, I sent Ambassador Sondland a text message asking if we are now saying that security assistance and a White House meeting are conditioned on investigations. Ambassador Sondland responded asking me to call him, which I did.

 

During that phone call, Ambassador Sondland told me that President Trump had told him that he wants President Zelensky to state publicly that Ukraine will investigate Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.

 

Ambassador Sondland also told me that he now recognized that he had made a mistake by earlier telling Ukrainian officials to whom he spoke that a White House meeting with President Zelensky was dependent on a public announcement of investigations. In fact, Ambassador Sondland said everything was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance. He said that President Trump wanted President Zelensky in a box by making public statement about ordering such investigations. 

 

“The Russians love it. And I quit.” 

On September 5, Taylor hosted two U.S. senators on a visit to Kiev (alternate spelling of the Ukrainian capital city name). During this trip Sen. Ron Johnson and Sen. Chris Murphy met with Zelensky. “His first question to the Senators was about the withheld security assistance.” Both lawmakers, “stressed that bipartisan support for Ukraine in Washington was Ukraine’s most important strategic asset and that President Zelensky should not jeopardize that bipartisan support by getting drawn into U.S. domestic politics.” 

On September 7, Taylor spoke with Morrison by phone. The story of the delayed military aid had leaked and spread in the news. Morrison described to Taylor a call between Trump and Sondland: 

According to Mr. Morrison, President Trump told Ambassador Sondland that he was not asking for a quid pro quo. But President Trump did insist that President Zelensky go to a microphone and say he is opening investigations of Biden and 2015 election interference, and that President Zelensky should want to do this himself.

 

Taylor continued: 

The following day, on September 8th, Ambassador Sondland and I spoke on the phone. He said he had talked to President Trump, as I had suggested a week earlier, but that President Trump was adamant that President Zelensky himself had to clear things up and do it in public. President Trump said it was not a quid pro quo.

 

Okay. Got it. Except, if Zelensky didn’t go public, there’d be no aid. (And remember, by now, the story of the aid delay was all over the news. Even an orange buffoon would know enough to start covering his noticeable tracks.) 

Ambassador Sondland said that he had talked to President Zelensky and Mr. Yermak and told them that, although this was not a quid pro quo, if President Zelensky did not clear things up in public, we would be at a stalemate. I understood a stalemate to mean that Ukraine would not receive the much-needed military assistance. Ambassador Sondland said that this conversation concluded with President Zelensky agreeing to make a public statement in an “interview with CNN.” 

 

The quid and the quo had been discovered. 

As we have mentioned before, Taylor followed up with a text message, expressing his reservations. “My nightmare is that the Ukrainians give the interview and don’t get the security assistance. The Russians love it. And I quit.” 

Ah…the Russians would love it! 

(Where have we heard that before?) 

Was there a quid pro quo, then? Taylor had no doubts. “I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign,” he told Sondland and Volker the next day.

 

Soon after, as the story spread in the free press, the Trump administration relented. The military aid was unfrozen. The quid and the quo had been discovered. The plan to get the Ukrainians to interfere in the coming election was aborted.

Ukraine will finally get the military assistance.