Donald Trump reenacts conversation with Gordon Sondland after bombshell impeachment testimony
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The fifth day of public impeachment hearings has come and gone, with another pair of key witnesses delivering damning evidence against Donald Trump. Meanwhile, the president spent his time lashing out against the proceedings on Twitter, writing: “Never in my wildest dreams thought my name would in any way be associated with the ugly word, Impeachment!”
Mr Trump has had a more controversial week than usual, as his EU ambassador, Gordon Sondland, implicated the president in a quid pro quo with Ukraine during his own impeachment hearings - along with vice president Mike Pence, secretary of state Mike Pompeo and acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. “Was there a ‘quid pro quo’?" Mr Sondland said in his opening statement. "As I testified previously, with regard to the requested White House call and White House meeting, the answer is yes."
The president's critics have said the proceedings are exposing impeachable offences, including ex-White House ethics lawyer Richard W Painter, who said it was effectively “game over” for his administration. Mr Trump has attempted to undermine the inquiry, insisting that he barely knew his ambassador and wanted “NOTHING” from Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev. As all that happened, the Democratic 2020 contenders took to the debate stage in Georgia to attack Mr Trump as "one of the most corrupt presidents" in US history.
During the Thursday testimony, Fiona Hill, a former White House adviser on Ukraine, and David Holmes, a top staffer at the US embassy in Ukraine, testified about the irregular channel of communication in which Mr Trump pushed for a domestic-ally oriented political investigation.
Ms Hill told investigators that she believed Republican arguments claiming that it was OK for Mr Trump to ask for an investigation into Ukraine's 2016 role played into Russian talking points, and that furtherance of that played into their hands.
Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal
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Mr Homes, meanwhile, told investigators that he was on the phone call that allegedly occurred 26 July, just a day after Mr Trump's call with Mr Zelensky. He said that he could hear the president speaking, even though he was not on spearker phone.
David Holmes says he asked Gordon Sondland whether Donald Trump did not "give a s*** about Ukraine," and the EU ambassador confirmed that to be the case.
"I asked why not", Mr Holmes said, "and Ambassador Sondland stated that the president only cares about the big stuff."
David Holmes says the hold on the US military assistance was lifted after "significant" media coverage and "bipartisan congressional expressions of concern".
He also said that top officials were still concerned in the days after whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had agreed to announce the investigations as part of the exchange.
An important quote from David Holmes' opening statement:
“I came to realize I had first-hand knowledge regarding certain events on July 26 that had not otherwise been reported, and that those events potentially bore on the question of whether the president did, in fact, have knowledge that those senior officials were using the levers of our diplomatic power to induce the new Ukrainian president to announce the opening of a criminal investigation against President Trump’s political opponent.”
Fiona Hill says she is an "American by choice", adding: "I have no interest in advancing the outcome of your inquiry in any particular direction, except toward the truth."
Here's the moment in which Fiona Hill shot down conspiracy theories about alleged Ukrainian election interference:
“Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country—and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies, confirmed in bipartisan Congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified.”
Fiona Hill is already receiving swift praise for expertly knocking down conspiracy theories that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election rather than Russia:
"In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests", Fiona Hill says. "I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary, and that Ukraine—not Russia—attacked us in 2016. These fictions are harmful even if they are deployed for purely domestic political purposes."
Fiona Hill says Russia got "exactly what it was hoping for" in the result of the 2016 election, as the nation has become divided over the contentious results.
She lays out her reasoning for providing such a sharp request in her opening remarks not to advance Russian talking points, saying that Russia has "created the kind of chaos" we are seeing, adding not to give them "more fodder to use against us in 2020".
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