This is what made them gasp

This is what made them gasp

by digby

CNN reports:

It occurred when William Taylor, the lead U.S. envoy to Ukraine, described a video conference call in July with officials from the White House Office of Management and Budget. Even Republicans who were present expressed concern, the source said, because the call made a direct link between President Donald Trump and the withholding of military aid to Ukraine for political purposes.

One OMB official, who was not named by Taylor during his appearance on Tuesday before the House Intelligence Committee, informed those on the call that there was a hold on U.S. military aid. While that OMB official didn’t know why the funds were being frozen, a second OMB aide, who was not on camera, said “the directive had come from the president to the chief of staff to OMB,” according to Taylor. The call occurred one week before Trump’s discussion with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

“There were audible sighs and ‘ughs’ (during Taylor’s deposition) when that process was described,” according to the source.

One member of Congress who was in the room, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., said the moment made the connection clear between the withholding of aid and Trump’s demand that Ukraine conduct an investigation that could implicate his political opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden.

“He drew a very direct line in a series of events he described as being President Trump’s decision to withhold funds and refuse a meeting with Zelenskiy,” Wasserman Schultz said, “unless there was a public pronouncement by him of investigations of Burisma.”

I’m not entirely sure why this is being seen as a huge breakthrough. It’s really just corroboration for what Trump himself was seen to have said on that phone call and he and his chief of staff later admitted to saying! I get that he’s a pathological liar and stunningly stupid but he said what he said and we all know it. Taylor’s testimony is helpful but it isn’t the smoking gun. Trump’s own words were.

Taylor’s testimony lays out the whole plot from his perspective in great detail. It is a devastating portrait of this corrupt “irregular” policy track in Ukraine designed to bribe the Ukrainian president into publicly smearing Joe Biden in exchange for military aid, a presidential meeting and, apparently, a trade agreement. Trump pulled out all the stops. Taylor is an important witness. But this isn’t a situation where we needed to know “what did the president know and when did he know it?” We know he knew it all from the beginning.

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