Impeachment

President Donald Trump’s top envoy to Ukraine told House impeachment investigators on Tuesday of intense efforts by administration officials to secure politically-motivated investigations of Trump’s rivals in exchange for a White House meeting with Ukraine’s president and critical military aid, according to sources in the room for the testimony.

William Taylor prompted sighs and gasps when he read a lengthy 15-page opening statement, two of the sources said.

Another person in the room said Taylor’s statement described “how pervasive the efforts were” among Trump's allies to convince Ukrainian officials to launch an investigation targeting former Vice President Joe Biden and another probe centering on a debunked conspiracy theory regarding the 2016 election.

Taylor also described the extent to which military assistance to Ukraine and a potential White House meeting with Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart were tied to those investigations, the source added.

“The body language of the people hearing it was ‘holy s---,’ seriously,” Rep. Harley Rouda (D-Calif.), a member of the Oversight Committee, said in reference to Taylor’s opening statement.

Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), a senior member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, characterized the testimony as a “sea change” that “could accelerate” the impeachment inquiry. Another lawmaker, Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski of New Jersey, said it was “the most thorough accounting we’ve had of the timeline.”

“I’ll tell you, as a former State Department political appointee, in my experience the difference between career folks and political appointees is the career folks take very good notes,” Malinowski said, hinting that Taylor provided corroboration to back up his recollections.

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/22/william-taylor-ukraine-testimony-trump-054259
 
nsacpi said:
President Donald Trump’s top envoy to Ukraine told House impeachment investigators on Tuesday of intense efforts by administration officials to secure politically-motivated investigations of Trump’s rivals in exchange for a White House meeting with Ukraine’s president and critical military aid, according to sources in the room for the testimony.

William Taylor prompted sighs and gasps when he read a lengthy 15-page opening statement, two of the sources said.

Another person in the room said Taylor’s statement described “how pervasive the efforts were” among Trump's allies to convince Ukrainian officials to launch an investigation targeting former Vice President Joe Biden and another probe centering on a debunked conspiracy theory regarding the 2016 election.

Taylor also described the extent to which military assistance to Ukraine and a potential White House meeting with Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart were tied to those investigations, the source added.

“The body language of the people hearing it was ‘holy s---,’ seriously,” Rep. Harley Rouda (D-Calif.), a member of the Oversight Committee, said in reference to Taylor’s opening statement.

Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), a senior member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, characterized the testimony as a “sea change” that “could accelerate” the impeachment inquiry. Another lawmaker, Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski of New Jersey, said it was “the most thorough accounting we’ve had of the timeline.”

“I’ll tell you, as a former State Department political appointee, in my experience the difference between career folks and political appointees is the career folks take very good notes,” Malinowski said, hinting that Taylor provided corroboration to back up his recollections.

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/22/william-taylor-ukraine-testimony-trump-054259
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WITCH HUNT. How do we know Stephen Lynch (D-Mass) isn't representing the district that encompasses Salem, Mass?
 
From Taylor's opening statement:

Ambassador Sondland tried to explain to me that President Trump is a businessman. When a businessman is about to sign a check to someone who owes him something, he said, the businessman asks that person to pay up before signing the check. Ambassador Volker used the same terms several days later...I argued to both that the explanation made no sense: the Ukrainians did not "owe" President Trump anything, and holding up security assistance for domestic political gain was "crazy."
 
Julio3000 said:
Double, double, toil and trouble.
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Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
 
nsacpi said:
They don't matter. There are a lot of Republicans who have adopted radio silence in recent months. They are the ones who matter.
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I would like to see one of the 4 (Nunes, Jordan, Meadows, McCarthy) publicly hint at flipping.

If one of those 4 flip, it's game over. Open cover for the moderates. The chances of McCarthy doing it are pretty much impossible.
 
Andrei Kozyrev, Russia's Foreign Minister from 1991 to 1996, with an op-ed calling for Trump's impeachment.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/22/opinion/trump-america-russia.html

As the foreign minister of a newly democratic Russia in 1992, I was in the same shoes as today’s Ukrainian leadership when we needed and received American aid to consolidate our democracy. Nobody took it for granted, but it was not viewed as just another diplomatic quid pro quo either. The American generosity was an expression of another moral truth: that democracies help each other. At the time, President George H.W. Bush, a Republican, was at risk of losing to the Democratic contender Bill Clinton in the next election. The idea that he or his representative would have asked us for “kompromat” on his rival is unimaginable.

That sort of presidential morality seems to be a thing of the past. But the America I knew then is still with us today, in the hearts and minds of ordinary citizens and members of Congress. If Washington looks different now, I believe it to be an aberration.

Russia likes seeing President Trump in the White House in part because it provides the Kremlin a chance to point to the ugly side of American politics — to say, just as they did with Mr. Nixon, look how sordid, how hypocritical.

But I believe that if Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, act to remove this president, a new powerful message would be sent to governments and people around the globe, just like the one that went out in 1974: Moral principles still matter in American politics and policy. And the future still belongs to moral truth and to those who embrace it.
 
It has long been obvious to some of us that we have a criminal in the White House. But he really has to go. Like now.
 
Taylor’s statement depicts the Administration clearly offering a quid pro quo while scrupulously denying doing so. Really, just seems like consciousness of guilt at this point.
 
He said, he said?

I have very little faith that Reps will cave unless public opinion forces them to and who knows what that number is. They have to already know what a liar and criminal Trump is.
 
I'm going to have to try out these new legal defenses. Tomorrow, I'm going to rob a bank. But at no point will I ever use the phrase "rob a bank" in any way or form, and if I never say "rob a bank," you can't convict me of robbing a bank. Also, because I have not yet been convicted, they are not allowed to gather evidence or hold a grand jury to seek an indictment, thus I can never be charged with anything. In a moment, I'm going to delete this post, and if anyone here ever tries to say they saw me say "rob a bank," it's illegitimate and inadmissible, causeway they have no proof I ever said anything and are relying on the second and third-hand information from their lying eyes.

This new world is fun!
 
The Chosen One said:
I would like to see one of the 4 (Nunes, Jordan, Meadows, McCarthy) publicly hint at flipping.

If one of those 4 flip, it's game over. Open cover for the moderates. The chances of McCarthy doing it are pretty much impossible.
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I think we have a better chance of Trump just admitting guilt and resigning in disgrace than Jim Jordan flipping.
 
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