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.
