Here's some of what we have learned since the impeachment inquiry started:
" According to a source present for her deposition, Hill described a meeting in her White House office with Gordon Sondland, whose murky role in Ukraine had alarmed her since an earlier meeting they’d attended in May. Now she asked Sondlond directly: Why was the American Ambassador to Brussels inserting himself in the affairs of a country that fell outside of his diplomatic portfolio and wasn’t even a member of the E.U.? “She challenged him on who gave him her portfolio, and he said the President,” the source told me. “It was news to her, and it was news to Bolton.”[Bolton was National Security Advisor at the time before resigning about the same time as the Ukraine story broke in early September - no1]
Trump himself, in other words, was putting together a rogue foreign-policy team, run by Giuliani, the President’s private attorney, that would go outside normal N.S.C. and State Department channels to pressure Ukraine. The effort would eventually result in Trump abruptly firing Yovanovitch, the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, at Giuliani’s behest, and withholding a White House meeting from Volodymyr Zelensky, the new Ukrainian President, until he agreed to investigate unsubstantiated allegations involving Biden’s son, and also discredited conspiracy theories involving Ukraine working against Trump in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. At the same time, Trump was refusing to release hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine, although it had been legally authorized by Congress.
The basic outlines of the plot have been known since the start of the impeachment inquiry, but the testimony by Hill and others this week both confirms key details and adds important information that shows how much the President was directly implicated. Trump ordered Sondland, a million-dollar contributor to his Inauguration; Kurt Volker, his Ukraine special envoy; and Energy Secretary Rick Perry to take control of Ukraine policy. (Kent, the State diplomat who was, like Hill, cut out of the loop, said that they called themselves “the three amigos.&rdquo😉 Trump personally ordered Yovanovitch’s firing. Trump personally ordered the withholding of military aid. The scandal, as this week showed, is about a lot more than saying “do us a favor though” in a phone call."
https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/forget-trumps-meltdownfollow-the-testimony
All the "whataboutisms" and distractions about a "quid pro quo" (not necessary for a campaign finance violation though plenty of circumstantial evidence exists for a QPQ regarding a bribery charge - though again proof beyond a reasonable doubt of a criminal charge is unnecessary for impeachment and removal) don't change the overriding fact; that the President of the United States was engaged in a criminal conspiracy to use US foreign policy and allocated public funds as leverage to force a foreign nation to aid his re-election campaign.
18 Oct '19 16:02
Trump says no interviews
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