Pelosi Impeachment Inquiry
- Thread starter Big AAPL
- Start date
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...ions-about-key-gop-impeachment-witness-trump/
As Mother Jones noted, though, Volker in his later testimony downplayed his knowledge of Biden’s proximity to that push.
“At no time was I aware of or took part in an effort to urge Ukraine to investigate former vice president Biden,” Volker said in his Oct. 3, 2019, deposition. “You will see from the extensive text messages I am providing, which convey a sense of real-time dialogue with several different actors, Vice President Biden was never a topic of discussion.”
He echoed this in his later testimony: “At no time was I aware of or knowingly took part in an effort to urge Ukraine to investigate former vice president Biden. As you know from the extensive real-time documentation I have provided, Vice President Biden was not a topic of our discussions.”
The idea that the Trump team’s push might somehow not actually have been about the Bidens was a very fine line walked by another member of the “three amigos” whose testimony Republicans initially played up, then-European Union Ambassador Gordon Sondland. Then-Energy Secretary Rick Perry also tried to make a similar argument. The problem with all of that: Giuliani himself had explicitly connected the requested investigations to Biden in his public comments months before. The motivation here would seem to have been no secret, especially for someone who actually pays regular attention to U.S.-Ukraine relations.
And the recording obtained by CNN shows Giuliani indeed making those connections in a call featuring Volker himself.
“All we need from the [Ukraine] President [Volodymyr Zelensky],” Giuliani says on the call, “is to say, I’m going to put an honest prosecutor in charge, he’s gonna investigate and dig up the evidence that presently exists, and is there any other evidence about involvement of the 2016 election, and then the Biden thing has to be run out.”
Giuliani adds: “Somebody in Ukraine’s got to take that seriously.”
At another point, Giuliani refers to his conversations with former Ukraine prosecutor general Viktor Shokin. Giuliani had worked with Shokin to push the theory that there was something wrong with then-Vice President Biden’s role in applying pressure on Ukraine to fire Shokin.
Again, Giuliani invokes Biden.
“My interest in it was about the collusion, let’s call it — I hate that word — I guess ‘conspiracy,’ to affect the 2016 election,” Giuliani said. “But here I was stuck with this allegation about Biden. And I don’t know what — I mean, now it’s out of my hands, it’s being investigated. But at the time, I didn’t know who would investigate it.”
Again, we’re dealing with some fine lines here. That latter quote doesn’t technically involve asking Ukraine to investigate, but it sure indicates a healthy interest in such investigations. And Giuliani’s first quote suggests a clear desire for a Ukrainian investigation involving Biden, even if you could argue it’s not a direct request.
Volker’s testimony is worth a careful parse. He also referred specifically to the idea that Biden wasn’t brought up in the text messages he turned over — rather than at all in any conversations. And whether he was specifically party to “an effort to urge Ukraine to investigate former vice president Biden” is also debatable, for reasons mentioned above.
Another issue: Volker in his deposition presented the Giuliani-Yermak call as “just an introductory phone call so they could talk to each other.”
“It was literally, you know, ‘Let me introduce,’ you know, ‘Mr. Giuliani,’ ” Volker said. “ ‘Let me introduce Mr. Yermak.’ ” Volker might have been referring narrowly to his own role, but the call lasted more than 40 minutes and dealt with plenty of the substantive subjects that would later come up in the impeachment trial.
Volker declined to comment to Mother Jones, saying, “I have nothing to add to what was already covered in my public testimony.” He also declined to comment to The Washington Post.
Volker has already clarified his testimony, to some degree, allowing that perhaps there was more of a quid pro quo than he had personally been aware of. His testimony that he was unaware of a quid pro quo was also called into question by a contemporary text message in which he seemingly referred to one of the key carrots in the Giuliani-Trump effort: Zelensky’s much-desired White House meeting.
“Heard from White House — assuming President [Zelensky] convinces trump he will investigate / ‘get to the bottom of what happened’ in 2016, we will nail down date for visit to Washington” for Zelensky, Volker said.
One of the witnesses Republicans initially highlighted, Sondland, later confirmed there was a quid pro quo, effectively turning him into a hostile witness for Trump. This would seem to point to valid questions about the testimony of a second key witness cited in Trump’s defense.
What does this traitor say about the 3.6 million people who died in other countries...was that the fault of Trump
If the Congress didn't tie up their time in February for impeachment maybe they could have better dealt with the China virus
Vindman is an idiot and a liar.----Excuse me Lt Col Vindman is an idiot and a liar.
I know about a dozen other ex-employees that could turn this into a class action lawsuit.
"This campaign of intimidation and retaliation has had severe and deeply personal ramifications for Lt. Col. Vindman," Vindman's lawsuit says. "It also left a stain on our democracy."
Vindman is asking a federal judge to rule that Trump Jr., Giuliani, Scavino and Hahn all engaged in the conspiracy campaign, and to award him financial damages in an amount that would be determined after trial.
The lawsuit against the four alleges that they violated sections 1 and 2 of the Ku Klux Klan Act, which is intended to bar threats or intimidation against government officials carrying out their constitutional duties.
Vindman, in the suit, also ties the alleged harassment campaign against him to the ongoing investigation by the House select committee on the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The suit claims that the message sent to Vindman "reverberates to this day, as witnesses subpoenaed by Congress in connection with its investigation into the events of January 6, 2021, continue to heed former President Trump's instructions to defy those subpoenas, undermining Congress's constitutional oversight role and the fundamental principle of checks and balances between three co-equal branches of government."
"This campaign of intimidation and retaliation has had severe and deeply personal ramifications for Lt. Col. Vindman," Vindman's lawsuit says. "It also left a stain on our democracy."
Vindman is asking a federal judge to rule that Trump Jr., Giuliani, Scavino and Hahn all engaged in the conspiracy campaign, and to award him financial damages in an amount that would be determined after trial.
The lawsuit against the four alleges that they violated sections 1 and 2 of the Ku Klux Klan Act, which is intended to bar threats or intimidation against government officials carrying out their constitutional duties.
Vindman, in the suit, also ties the alleged harassment campaign against him to the ongoing investigation by the House select committee on the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The suit claims that the message sent to Vindman "reverberates to this day, as witnesses subpoenaed by Congress in connection with its investigation into the events of January 6, 2021, continue to heed former President Trump's instructions to defy those subpoenas, undermining Congress's constitutional oversight role and the fundamental principle of checks and balances between three co-equal branches of government."
Congress still did their regular business during a few weeks of impeachment hearings....so.....trump had more free time actually...
EXCELLENT POSTING
[Maggie Haberman’s Confidence Man] shows Trump’s failure to grasp basic policy concepts, such as Trump suggesting in an interview with Haberman that the Senate’s minority party could block legislation by skipping votes. “The vice president’s vote doesn’t count. It doesn’t count. You might want to check this,” Trump said.
When the House introduced articles of impeachment against Trump for the first time in 2019, Trump reacted with a familiar refrain, according to the book: “I’ll just sue Congress. They can’t do this to me.”