14 November 2018/Diplomats Push Back Against Trump In Testimony, Republicans Discredit Themselves

Diplomats Push Back Against Trump In Testimony, Republicans Discredit Themselves

Republicans’ Best Defense Is a Bad Offense

Extract/Summary: In the first day of impeachment testimony before Congress, Americans learned they are still served by people of integrity who are committed to advancing the national interest. The day’s two witnesses, George Kent and William Taylo r, both deeply experienced diplomats, provided precise, scrupulously nonpartisan and damning testimony about the events at the center of the impeachment inquiry: the secretive shakedown of Ukraine by President Trump and his associates, for the president’s political gain.

Americans also learned that the Republicans have set themselves a degrading task. Rather than engage the facts about Mr. Trump’s Ukrainian escapade, they are twisting them and eliding them and inventing new ones they’d prefer. They spent most of Wednesday stuffing straw men and then ostentatiously knocking them down.

Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio led the offensive against the impeachment inquiry. Jordan insisted Trump couldn’t possibly have done anything wrong because, in the end, Ukraine got its money without committing to any investigations.

This point of view has radical implications for America’s system of justice and overcrowded prisons, if Mr. Jordan in fact truly believes that all inmates convicted of attempted crimes are innocent of wrongdoing.

Republicans chose to ignore evidence of how Trump held up Ukraine military assistance for weeks, and released it only after circumstances dramatically changed. First, Politico published a story revealing that the aid was being withheld, generating bipartisan outrage, and then the public learned of the existence of the whistle-blower complaint that Mr. Trump had linked delivering that aid to the personal “favor” he sought from Ukraine. (Note: Although Republicans joined Democrats in pushing for a lifting of the hold on Ukrainian military aid, they were also outraged by the whistle-blower complaint, almost universally rallying to Trump’s defense. Their outrage has mounted as the investigation of this scandal, now an impeachment inquiry, has progressed and become public.)

Republicans piously insisted that the president cared only about rooting out corruption. It is just a coincidence, in this telling, that the prime target of the investigation Trump was demanding happened to be Joe Biden.

The facts, once again, were inconvenient for the argument. Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, has been openly bragging for months about his efforts to get Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Biden and his son Hunter for alleged corruption. Now we know that what was being dangled in exchange for that investigation was a coveted visit to the White House for the new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and nearly $400 million in military aid that Ukrainians desperately needed in order to defend themselves against Russian aggression.

The regular delivery of this aid has been authorized for years by bipartisan majorities in Congress. Trump refused to pay up, Taylor and Kent testified, until Zelensky publicly announced what would be, in effect, a public plug for the president’s re-election campaign. As Taylor said, “Withholding security assistance in exchange for help with a domestic political campaign in the United States would be crazy.”

Republicans attempted to cast the hearings as a sham, a Democratic plot to remove Trump and overturn his 2016 election. Taylor and Kent declined to play along. They came across not as angry Democrats or Deep State conspirators, but as men who have devoted their lives to serving their country.

Pressed at one point by a Republican congressman to agree that a particular offense was not impeachable, Kent flashed some steely contempt for such political gamesmanship. “I’m here as a fact witness to answer your questions,” he instructed the congressman, John Ratcliffe of Texas. “Your constitutional obligation is to consider the evidence before you.”

At another point, Taylor said he had been critical of the Obama administration’s reluctance to supply Ukraine with anti-tank missiles and other lethal defensive weapons to defend itself against Russia, and that he was pleased when the Trump administration agreed to do so. Republicans seemed taken aback that a witness so dangerous to Trump would also forthrightly and calmly criticize his Democratic predecessor, former President Barack Obama.

Trump’s abandonment of the Ukrainians came out most chillingly in new evidence Taylor offered. Last week, Taylor said, one of his embassy aides told him of a phone call the staffer overheard between Trump and his ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, which took place in a restaurant on July 26, the day after Mr. Trump told Mr. Zelensky to “do us a favor though” — by announcing investigations into both the Bidens and a debunked conspiracy theory about the Democratic National Committee email server in 2016.

In the call with Sondland, Trump asked about “the investigations,” and Sondland said the Ukrainians appeared to be cooperating. The staffer then asked Sondland what Trump thought about Ukraine, according to Taylor. He said that Sondland replied that Trump apparently cared more about the investigations of the Bidens than he did about Ukraine. (Note: And by extension, one would note, about US national security.)

Republicans showed no interest in in pursuing this new evidence.

Another popular Republican argument on Wednesday was that Taylor and Kent were offering nothing but hearsay. Of course, this wouldn’t be an issue if Trump were not obstructing the inquiry by refusing to allow White House officials, including the people who were on the call, to testify. (In fact, one of those officials — Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman — did go before Congress, and Republicans rewarded him by speculating he was a Ukrainian double agent.)

Perhaps the most telling remark was offered by a Republican staff lawyer, Stephen Castor, who suggested that while the president’s behavior may have been highly irregular, “it’s not as outlandish as it could be.” Here’s a tip: When “not as outlandish as it could be” is your strongest defense, it’s time to rethink your position.