Impeachment Today: Did the Very Best People Set Up Trump?
After weeks of Republicans demanding that Schiff open up the doors and allow the public to see the impeachment proceedings, Trump says this morning: “They shouldn’t be having public hearings.”
Dear Leader’s followers are beside themselves trying to figure out a way around a case for impeachment that gets more substantial every day.
Today, the transcripts of Lt. Col. Vindman and Dr. Fiona Hill, were made public. Once again there’s first-hand testimony on how the levers of government were abused to help the president politically, at the cost of our national security.
The latest defenses for the indefensible coming out of Capitol Hill are: “sure there was Quid Pro Quo, but you can’t prove Trump was behind it” OR “sure there was Quid Pro Quo and maybe it was even wrong, but since the deal fell through, it doesn’t count.”
Storyline # 1 holds that if the President wasn’t extorting the Ukraine to benefit his 2020 campaign, it must have been one of his minions. You know, the various “radical left-wing bureaucrats” hired by the Trump administration who testified before Congress must be the real villains.
Congressional Republicans are now sowing doubts about whether Sondland, Giuliani and Mulvaney were actually representing the president or freelancing to pursue their own agendas.
The GOP is effectively offering up the three to be fall guys. They’re suggesting White House officials made demands to the Ukrainians without Trump’s explicit blessing.
As Greg Sargent at the Washington Post points out, there are good reasons why this doesn’t hold water, namely four of those troubling fact thingies, established by multiple witnesses:
Trump [personally] suspended the military aid.
Trump’s vice president delivered the message about that suspended aid directly to Zelensky.
Giuliani and Trump spent months pressuring Ukraine to carry out Trump’s sordid political scheme to absolve Russia and target Biden.
Trump’s key ringleader Sondland, acting at the direction of Trump and Giuliani throughout, directly told Ukraine that getting the aid was conditional on bringing that scheme to fruition.
Incredibly, Trump’s spinners are now trying to argue that Sondland suddenly freelanced that last piece of the plot — the extortion piece — entirely on his own.
https://twitter.com/HeathMayo/status/1192837783427145729?s=20
The “too stupid” alibi. Another defense of the indefensible being proffered comes mainly through National Review, namely that the administration should admit to having pursued an improper plot to use official United States foreign policy to affect the 2020 presidential election — after having fervently denied doing so — but claim that no harm was done because it was caught in the act and thus had to give up this haphazard attempt to do something wrong.
The problem with this rationalization is that, but for congressional intervention, the extortion scheme would have worked.
From the New York Times:
Finally bending to the White House request, Mr. Zelensky’s staff planned for him to make an announcement in an interview on Sept. 13 with Fareed Zakaria, the host of a weekly news show on CNN.
Though plans were in motion to give the White House the public statement it had sought, events in Washington saved the Ukrainian government from any final decision and eliminated the need to make the statement.
Word of the freeze in military aid had leaked out, and Congress was in an uproar. Two days before the scheduled interview, the Trump administration released the assistance and Mr. Zelensky’s office quickly canceled the interview.
Today’s greatest hits on social media...
Yes, there really is a Blacks for Trump rally today.
https://twitter.com/IsaacHayes3/status/1192842673046147077?s=20
Senator Harris is loading up the snark. (And I love it)
https://twitter.com/KamalaHarris/status/1192836725120360450?s=20
*Coverage of the impeachment saga will continue through the weekend if there are new developments to report. And I assume there will be.*
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