“An administration taking the 5th”
by Tom Sullivan
“If only American politics weren’t so partisan, I might be able to make sense of it all, but I can’t,” McSweeney’s Devorah Blachor wrote Wednesday afternoon.
The Donald Trump impeachment inquiry’s opening public hearing featured William Taylor, America’s top diplomat in Ukraine, and George Kent, deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs. Testimony by two obviously competent, obviously committed foreign service officers dedicated to lives of service left Blachor perplexed:
At the hearing, I saw two serious, professional men who both served under Republican and Democrat administrations. Yet just last week, President Trump was ordered to pay two million dollars for using charity funds to pay off his business debts and promote himself. How can a voter like me be expected to know who is more credible?
[…]
What sounds more believable? That career diplomats with everything to lose would make up a story implicating the most powerful man in America? Or that the president’s butt-dialling, criminal-loving lawyer was involved in something nefarious? I wish this would be easier!
The Washington Post’s Alexandra Petri found the five-hour hearing similarly satire-worthy:
REPUBLICAN QUESTIONER: And don’t you, of course, the Fusion GPS, when we know Alexandra Chalupa has not been called, of course?
TAYLOR: I’m trying, I’m really trying, to find the question in that.
Petri refers to veteran Republican staff attorney Steve Castor’s questioning of the two diplomats. Here is a sample:
Castor spent an extraordinary amount of time asking witnesses to acknowledge they know nothing about things and people they know nothing about. Those include Russian-inspired conspiracy theories about Black Ledgers and missing computer servers promoted by Trump’s defenders. Where once Republicans spoke in dog whistles, they now speak in cult whistles only Fox News viewers and fans of “QAnon” can hear. The day did not go well for Trump or the GOP.
Democrats hired Daniel Goldman earlier this year to lead their questioning. Goldman served as Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York for ten years. He prosecuted mobsters on racketing and murder charges, including “a Genovese Family Boss and two hitmen on a case involving RICO, two murders, one attempted murder, and two murder conspiracies.”
For a month, the two attorneys led their party’s questioning of witnesses behind closed doors. Their first public appearance proved Castor was no match for his counterpart Goldman.
The most important news from yesterday’s hearing came at the end of Taylor’s opening statement. The event occurred the day after the July 25 call between Trump and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump asked for “a favor”:
Last Friday, a member of my staff told me of events that occurred on July 26. While Ambassador Volker and I visited the front, this member of my staff accompanied Ambassador Sondland. Ambassador Sondland met with Mr. Yermak.
Following that meeting, in the presence of my staff at a restaurant, Ambassador Sondland called President Trump and told him of his meetings in Kyiv. The member of my staff could hear President Trump on the phone, asking Ambassador Sondland about “the investigations.” Ambassador Sondland told President Trump that the Ukrainians were ready to move forward.
Following the call with President Trump, the member of my staff asked Ambassador Sondland what President Trump thought about Ukraine. Ambassador Sondland responded that President Trump cares more about the investigations of Biden, which Giuliani was pressing for. At the time I gave my deposition on October 22, I was not aware of this information. I am including it here for completeness. As the Committee knows, I reported this information through counsel to the State Department’s Legal Adviser, as well as to counsel for both the Majority and the Minority on the Committee. It is my understanding that the Committee is following up on this matter.
In his October testimony, Sondland denied Trump presented Zelensky with any “arms for political dirt” deal, as former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner framed it last night. Sondland revised his testimony on Nov. 5 to say he remembered discussing the linkage with Andriy Yermak, a senior adviser to Zelensky, during a meeting in Warsaw on Sept. 1.
Sondland is scheduled to testify publicly on Nov. 20. Democrats will ask why he omitted from his testimony a call to reassure the president investigations were coming. (Stock up on popcorn.) If Sondland hoped to avoid a perjury indictment in “coming clean,” Slate’s Fred Kaplan writes, Taylor’s testimony and the forthcoming testimony of his staffer indicate “Sondland didn’t come clean enough.” David Holmes, Taylor’s staffer, is scheduled to appear before a closed-door hearing on Friday.
Republicans on the committee complained repeatedly that Taylor and Kent had no contact with Trump nor any firsthand knowledge of his directives. This is, as they know, only because the Trump administration has refused to allow those with direct knowledge to testify, in addition to stonewalling House requests for critical documents. In a tossed-off comment last night, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews called Trump’s “an administration taking the 5th.”