Wednesday’s “impeachment” hearing is in the can, and here’s what we know from it.
All Acting Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor and State Department’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs George Kent could offer throughout the entire 6-ish hours of testimony was hearsay and supposition.
Taylor repeatedly said he’d heard this, or someone reported to him that, or it came to him through a chain of tellings and retellings. “I heard it from a guy who heard it from a guy (who heard it from a guy).” He also insisted that Progressive-Democrat claims of wrongs done by President Donald Trump vis-à-vis Ukraine were his understanding, too, even his clear understanding. Yet when directly asked how he arrived at his understandings, all he could say was, “Well, I heard it from a guy….” Even his in-hearing “revelation”—that Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland thought Trump, in the runup to and during the telecon, only cared about a Biden investigation—was nothing more than that Taylor had heard it from guy: Sondland reporting to Taylor Sondland’s own “understanding.”
Sondland’s understanding? Congressman Jim Jordan (R, OH) spelled out an example of Sondland’s…understandings:
Ambassador Taylor recalls that Mr [Tim] Morrison told Ambassador Taylor that I told Mr Morrison that I had conveyed this message to Mr [Andriy] Yermak on September 1, 2019, in connection with Vice President Pence’s visit to Warsaw and a meeting with President [Volodymyr] Zelensky[.]
When asked if either had talked to Zelenskiy or Trump or Trump associates themselves, both Kent and Taylor had nothing to say except that they had talked to none of the principles or associates of the principles. All they had was their grapevines.
There were, though, some actual facts revealed in Wednesday’s hearing:
- Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said—repeatedly and on the world stage during multiple press conferences that he held—there was no pressure, no influence attempted
- Despite Progressive-Democrat Intelligence Committee members’ claims that Trump had intimidated Zelenskiy into beginning or publicly announcing the need for investigations under threat of aid cut-off, Zelenskiy began no investigations, made no such public averrals. The aid was released shortly after the telecon
- Ukraine’s government didn’t know aid had been held up until long after the telecon
- Ukrainian aid had been held up over skepticism about endemic Ukrainian corruption; it was released when the White House staff became satisfied that Zelenskiy and his staff were “the real deal”
- Progressive-Democrats, having failed in their quid pro quo quest, now are turning to the even more difficult to prove extortion/bribery (they can’t decide which) charge
- Intel Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D, CA) continues to refuse to allow the principle witness to this affair, the reputed whistleblower—whose own claim is based solely on hearsay—to be called to testify
- By extension, Schiff also won’t allow the whistleblower’s reputed sources to be called to testify
This is the level to which the Progressive-Democratic Party has sunk.
Today’s hearing will be…interesting?