Donald Trump Sack Watch

So we're on Day 2 of the public Impeachment hearings being conducted by the House Intelligence Committee, led by Rep. Adam Schiff (a Democrat). The top ranking Republican on this committee is Devin Nunes.

So far, former Acting Ambassader to Ukraine Bill Taylor and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs have both testified that the July 25th call between Trump and Zelenskyy was largely about Trump holding up military aid to Ukraine in exchange for Zelenskyy not only opening an investigation into Joe Biden and his son, but also announcing this investigation publicly. Both testimonies were considered extremely damaging to Trump's version of events. Republicans didn't offer much of a defense, instead focusing on the Bidens and their dealings with Ukrainian company Burisma, which has nothing to do with this impeachment inquiry.

Today, Former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch is now testifying and so far her views on this scandal are perfectly in line with Taylor's and Kent's. Trump basically fired her because he didn't think she was loyal to him due to her reputation for fighting corruption within Ukraine.

Basically, this looks super bad for Trump and the Republicans are really struggling to defend his motives, intent and methods for how he handled that call. All they're doing is deflecting and deriding the witnesses giving testimony while also trying to out the whistle-blower, who really isn't even relevant anymore.

Thanks for the update, good to hear that. What would you say are the chances of Trump actually getting impeached in %?

Myesyats wrote:Thanks for the update, good to hear that. What would you say are the chances of Trump actually getting impeached in %?

I think the chances are very high. I'd say there's a 90% chance at this point.

The highlight of this first part of the hearing was Trump live-tweeting and attacking Yovanovitch, trashing her record as a Ambassador to Somalia and Ukraine. Adam Schiff then read these tweets to Yovanovitch and allow her to respond. She responded that the attack from Trump made her feel intimidated.

Many are calling Trump's attack an act of witness intimidation.

Trump has since deleted the tweet, further providing credence that he knows he likely made a mistake.

He just keeps digging that hole deeper.

is there even any evidence against trump or is it just hear say. if they have evidence they why not just show it and be done with all this.

Is it this tweet you're referring to?

Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia, how did that go? Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke unfavorably about her in my second phone call with him. It is a U.S. President’s absolute right to appoint ambassadors.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 15, 2019

Myesyats wrote:Is it this tweet you're referring to?

Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia, how did that go? Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke unfavorably about her in my second phone call with him. It is a U.S. President’s absolute right to appoint ambassadors.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 15, 2019

Yup, that's the one. The portion regarding Zelenskyy supposedly not liking her will be a key attack point from Republicans when they have a chance to question her in the next part of this hearing, which is coming up soon. They're going to try and question her competence, her integrity and paint her as being fired for not being good enough to do the job rather than not being suitable to Trump's agenda.

Looks like he actually did not delete it.

He's clearly making things worse for himself with this rabid tweeting.

Unique wrote:is there even any evidence against trump or is it just hear say. if they have evidence they why not just show it and be done with all this.

Well the memo itself (it keeps getting called a transcript, but it's not) is perhaps the strongest piece of evidence as it directly catches Trump's failed attempt to bribe Zelenskyy. His Chief of Staff. Mick Mulvaney, admitted (on national TV to the press) that the intent at quid-pro-quo was to induce Ukraine to publicly investigate the Bidens in exchange for a very influential White House visit as well as the military aid being held in their fight against the Russians. He literally said this happens all the time (I dispute that strongly).

So basically, it's not normal or lawful to try and bribe or extort a foreign head of state into opening an investigation into a political rival. Bribery and extortion are federal offenses and committing either as President is a violation of the Constitution, meaning it's a high crime, which is an impeachable offense. The memo, combined with Trump firing Ambassador Yovanovitch, who has been known to be tough on corruption and was seen by his personal lawyer (Rudy Giuliani) as an obstacle in his scheme, are pretty damning evidence of what he was trying to do in order to get an advantage on Joe Biden, who expects to be his opponent in the 2020 General election.

The testimonies at these hearings provide context around the environment of corruption within the Trump State Department that allowed for Trump to even attempt his scheme. That's why this is important to American voters.

So Week 2 so far of Impeachment hearings:

Tuesday

Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman - Our top specialist on Ukraine for the National Security Council. He was listening in on the 7/25 call between Trump and Zelenskiy and was concerned by what he heard. He was told (by National Security Advisor John Bolton) to report this to the lawyer for the NSC, who moved the recording of the call to a highly secure server that only a few people have access to. This is why we only have the memo of the call to go by.

Jennifer Williams - Senior Aide to Vice President Pence on Europe and Russia. Was also listening on the call and testified that she was concerned by Trump's comments to Zelenskiy. Unlike Vindman however, she did not report her concerns.

Kurt Volker - Former Special Envoy to Ukraine. Part of the much publicized "three amigos" group tasked by Trump with handling our foreign policy with Ukraine. The other 2 members are EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland and Rick Perry, our Energy Secretary. Volker is a witness that the GOP members of the committee called to testify as initially he was the first Trump official to testify on this issue back on October 3rd, stating that he witnessed no quid-pro-quo between Trump and Zelenskiy, but now testifying publicly and following the testimonies of Bill Taylor and George Kent last week that appeared to have indicated he lied in his first testimony, he changed his tune. Volker is perhaps one of the most important witnesses because he is involved at every level of this scandal and has interacted with all of the major players, perhaps most critically Rudy Giuliani (Trump's personal lawyer) as Volker hooked him up with Ukrainian officials to work on delivering Trump's request of Zelenskiy. His testimony was considered very damaging to the Republicans, and thus Trump, as he was supposed to be their strongest witness to refute that Trump did nothing wrong.

Tim Morrison - Advisor at the NSC who was on the call and and Lt. Col Vindman's boss. He actually turned out to be the GOP's strongest witness in that he testified that he heard nothing improper on the call. His primary job as witness was to damage Vindman's testimony by arguing that Vindman never brought his concerns to him, as his superior. Vindman didn't do this because he was told by NSA Bolton (Morrison's boss) to go straight to an NSC lawyer.


Today

Gordon Sondland - US Ambassador to the EU. Ukraine falls under his overall purview due to this role so he was heavily involved in the July 25th call and is a central figure to the fallout of it. He is a millionaire businessman with no foreign policy experience who basically got his position due to donating $1 million to Trump's Inauguration fund. As such, he has the least understanding of the geopolitical climate this scandal has occurred in. In his initial deposition (closed door meeting), he told a top Ukrainian official that military aid from the US would require the Zelenskiy administration open investigations into Burisma (and by extension Hunter Biden). This testimony formed the crux of the "quid-pro-quo" argument for the Democrats. Today, Sondland testified publicly and after an opening statement that appeared to back what he said in his deposition, he spent a large amount of the hearing walking those comments back under scrutiny from GOP members of the committee. He was caught in several half-truths throughout the hearing by members of both sides of the committee. The major takeaway is that GOP members got him to admit that he "presumed" there would need to be quid-pro-quo and that Trump explicitly told him that he did not want anything from Zelenskiy. This has formed the basis for the GOP's strongest defense of him. On the other hand, Democrats were able to get him to admit that the aid was indeed held up and the Ukrainians were indeed ready to open investigations of Burisma, meaning that the only person who benefits from that was Trump, indicating quid-pro-quo. So both sides got their pound of flesh from Sondland. It's rather hard to really know what to make of his testimony honestly. Not a clear win for either side to me, yet Trump still came out of this looking the worse for it. This was far from an exoneration for him.


Tomorrow

Laura Cooper - Deputy assistant secretary at the Defense Department, who in closed-door testimony said that Ukrainians raised the administration's delay of $391 million in security assistance in August. She said that she spoke to Volker about the issue and that he told her he was working with Ukrainians to make a statement disavowing election interference.

David Hale - The undersecretary of state for political affairs at the State Department. He testified behind closed doors on Nov. 6, and Republicans asked for him to appear in the public hearings.

Thursday

Fiona Hill - Formerly the top Russia specialist on the National Security Council, testified last month that she registered concerns about the parallel foreign policy channel that Giuliani was using to impact policy in Ukraine. She told investigators that she discussed her concerns with then-National Security Adviser John Bolton, who said that Giuliani was "a hand grenade that is going to blow everybody up."

David Holmes - State Department aide who overheard a phone conversation between Sondland and the president on July 26. Holmes appeared in a closed-door interview on Friday, but several Democrats who listened to his testimony indicated that they wanted him to appear in a public hearing.

After the ridiculous "Russia interfered in our elections" narrative which the Democrats have been riding for 3 years based on a handful of Russian Internet trolls posting shit on Social Media for advertising reasons, with ultimately nothing coming out of it politically, here comes another episode of useless proceedings that will lead to nothing but Trump making himself look witch-hunted and absolved from any wrongdoing.

My favourite moment of this circus was when some doofus had the balls to say out loud that hearsay is sometimes better than real evidence

Democrats are of the belief that feelings, concerns and assumptions are tangible evidence. They also believe one is guilty until proven innocent. These bozos make Louis Tully look like Thurgood Marshall

Lex wrote:Democrats are of the belief that feelings, concerns and assumptions are tangible evidence. They also believe one is guilty until proven innocent. These bozos make Louis Tully look like Thurgood Marshall

You are probably the first person, since the post-integration south of the 1970's, who have used Justice Marshall's name in the same sentence as "Bozo"

am i the only one that thinks if trump was a left wing president then none of this would have seen the light of day.

Unique wrote:am i the only one that thinks if trump was a left wing president then none of this would have seen the light of day.

Yes. You must have been asleep when Hillary got all sorts of crap thrown at her for much less, and Obama had every possible conspiracy theory used against him down to him not even being born in America.

futbol wrote:After the ridiculous "Russia interfered in our elections" narrative which the Democrats have been riding for 3 years based on a handful of Russian Internet trolls posting shit on Social Media for advertising reasons, with ultimately nothing coming out of it politically, here comes another episode of useless proceedings that will lead to nothing but Trump making himself look witch-hunted and absolved from any wrongdoing.

Russia did interfere in our elections though. That is not up for debate or interpretation. They did it. Both the Republicans and Democrats agree on this. Only Trump and Putin disagree on it, which is telling.  What you mean to dispute is the claim from Democrats that Trump colluded and induced Russia to interfere in our elections. What makes the Muller report singularly damaging to Trump is the fact that Trump was caught obstructing justice on no fewer than 7 different occasions. By instructing members of his cabinet and administration to ignore subpoenas to appear before this committee, that is also obstruction of justice.  Obstruction of Justice is a high crime and thus an impeachable offense.

Lex wrote:Democrats are of the belief that feelings, concerns and assumptions are tangible evidence. They also believe one is guilty until proven innocent. These bozos make Louis Tully look like Thurgood Marshall

And the Republicans appear to believe that unless there is direct, smoking gun evidence, Trump did nothing wrong. There is no basis in reality for such a thought process. They are ignoring significant circumstantial evidence, which is given equal weight under the law in criminal investigations here. They literally believe that because Trump got caught in the act that he should be let off the hook because what he intended to do didn't occur....due to him getting caught. Attempted crimes are still crimes here. No one gets let off the hook when they attempt to commit a crime, regardless of whether they failed or were successful. They still get charged and put in jail. The same must apply with Trump. He is not above the law.

Caught in the act? What? If he were caught in the act, why has he not been removed from office? Remember when Schiff had irrefutable evidence of......something last year?

The short of it is if the dems had anything concrete against Trump, he would have been gone three years ago. As it is, we're being presented high school girl gossip, chinese whispers and clairvoyance as proof of wrongdoing

Lex wrote:Caught in the act? What? If he were caught in the act, why has he not been removed from office? Remember when Schiff had irrefutable evidence of......something last year?

The short of it is if the dems had anything concrete against Trump, he would have been gone three years ago. As it is, we're being presented high school girl gossip, chinese whispers and clairvoyance as proof of wrongdoing

That's what this whole thing is about. You're not an American so you're forgiven for not understanding our political system well enough to truly grasp what's going on here so I'll explain it to you:

When a President gets caught even attempting a crime, we can't just remove him. This isn't Revolutionary-era France or South America. We don't just overthrow and depose our leaders, no matter what they've done. That has never happened in our history and it's a reason why our founding fathers set our government up the way that they did.

What you're seeing here is the system of checks and balances in action. Congress, as the legislative branch are a check on the Executive branch (The President) and can remove the President if both chambers believe it necessary to do so. They must first investigate the crime first, which is the purpose for these hearings. The House (controlled by the Democrats today) will then have an impeachment vote. If they vote to impeach him, removing him and actually charging him with the crimes he's accused of then falls on the Senate (controlled by the Republicans today).

The way I see this playing out, the House will impeach him and the Senate will not convict him. The Senate won't remove him for several reasons:

- They likely don't consider the evidence gathered by the House strong enough to remove Trump. So basically, they'll admit he did a bad thing, but will insist that bad thing doesn't rise to the level required to impeach.

- Republicans have made it clear that they don't like the process in place for conducting these investigations so this is hyper partisan. Impeachment and removal require bipartisan support.

- It's too close to an election year and they believe Trump should be on the ballot.

- A continuation of the above point: They fear Trump and his supporters, who are their constituents. They fear for their jobs in that to vote to convict will invite a primary challenge from a Trump supporter for their seat. Trump's future is tied to their own, for better or worse.

rincon wrote:

Unique wrote:am i the only one that thinks if trump was a left wing president then none of this would have seen the light of day.

Yes. You must have been asleep when Hillary got all sorts of crap thrown at her for much less, and Obama had every possible conspiracy theory used against him down to him not even being born in America.

nothing happened to any of them

Unique wrote:

rincon wrote:

Unique wrote:am i the only one that thinks if trump was a left wing president then none of this would have seen the light of day.

Yes. You must have been asleep when Hillary got all sorts of crap thrown at her for much less, and Obama had every possible conspiracy theory used against him down to him not even being born in America.

nothing happened to any of them

Bill Clinton was what you’d probably call “left wing”. He isn’t, but that’s another discussion.

He got the treatment Trump is getting now for lying once about a blowjob. He should’ve been removed from office imo. And Trump has done a lot worse than that.

Unique wrote:

rincon wrote:

Unique wrote:am i the only one that thinks if trump was a left wing president then none of this would have seen the light of day.

Yes. You must have been asleep when Hillary got all sorts of crap thrown at her for much less, and Obama had every possible conspiracy theory used against him down to him not even being born in America.

nothing happened to any of them

There is no left wing in america.

Highlights from last night's public testimony from Laura Cooper, deputy assistant secretary at the Defense Department, and David Hale, undersecretary of state for political affairs at the State Department:

- Cooper revealed that her staff received 2 emails from State Dept. on July 25th (the day of the Trump-Zelenskiy call) asking about the US military aid to Ukraine.  

Providing detail: Cooper outlines 3 different inquiries about the military aid:

-- An email sent at 2:31 PM EST on July 25th that said the Ukrainian embassy and House Foreign Affairs Committees were both asking about the military aid.

-- An email about 2 hours later (4:25 PM)  from the State Dept stating that both the Ukrainians and the Hill (Congress) are aware of the aid being frozen.

-- An official from the Ukrainian embassy reached out to a member of Cooper's staff directly and asked about the aid.

So this again blows up the Republican argument that the Ukrainians weren't aware of their military aid being held up. They were very much aware of this. The Republicans cannot explain this discrepancy so they ignore it and claim that the Ukrainians were never aware of their aid being held up, a clear lie.

- Hale testified that Trump and the OMB (Office of Management and Budget) ordered the freeze on military aid on orders from Trump and that this decision was opposed by every other federal agency that was involved in Ukraine foreign policy. He testifies that the State Dept. wanted the aid released to Ukraine as that was in line with our foreign policy. Hale also defended Amb. Yovanovitch who was the victim of an internal smear campaign instigated by Rudy Giuliani on orders from Trump as she was being recalled. To date, no official explanation from the White House has been releasesd explaning why Yovanovitch was recalled and her reputation damaged by Trump and Giuliani.

Why does this matter? Hale was called as witness to these hearings by the Republicans. They thought he could help their case. He hurt it (and by extension Trump's defense) instead.

Well done for informing people here McLewis. It would seem there are several misinformed folks.

I haven't been able to watch or listen, so I've just caught the previews/wrap ups from "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered" via NPR. They do a bang up job. Wonderful programs.

Lex wrote:Democrats are of the belief that feelings, concerns and assumptions are tangible evidence. They also believe one is guilty until proven innocent. These bozos make Louis Tully look like Thurgood Marshall

Yikes

CBarca wrote:Well done for informing people here McLewis. It would seem there are several misinformed folks.

I haven't been able to watch or listen, so I've just caught the previews/wrap ups from "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered" via NPR. They do a bang up job. Wonderful programs.

No worries, man. Thanks.

I've been listening to the hearings on the TuneIn app while working. I listen to podcasts pretty much all day anyway so this wasn't all that different. The format has been rather easy to follow. I keep Twitter up while listening to get tweets from folks who catch stuff I missed.

I expect a lot of guys here to be misinformed simply because of the fact that many are looking at this from the outside in.