When everything a government official does is directed and authorized by the president, does that really make it rogue?

A short time ago President went out on the White House lawn before boarding Marine One and read out selective portions of testimony from Ambassador Gordon Sondland. Photographers were there. Read More

If you saw this morning’s testimony, I don’t have much to add. It speaks for itself. From every direction, Sondland confirmed the existence of a corrupt enterprise, directed expressly by the President. According to Sondland, everyone was in the loop – the Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor, the President, the Vice President, everyone. If you didn’t see or want to review it more closely, here are the prepared remarks. We’ll have more as we go on the key revelations from this morning.

The Sondland testimony seems historic and shattering. We’re all taking it in. Here’s the text to read directly.

There will be much to discuss. It basically seems to be throwing everyone in sight under the bus. Here are some highlights we’ve identified from the prepared remarks.

Happy Wednesday, November 20. In perhaps the most highly-anticipated day of the impeachment inquiry hearings so far, Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland will testify this morning. Here’s more on that and the other stories we’re watching.

The “we” in the title is admittedly doing a lot of work, as they say. “We” applies to some of us more than others. Indeed, I should say I found much of Amb. Volker’s testimony far short of credible. But if we take his claims at face value he found himself, to use his words, trying to “thread the needle.” He could see that the requests from Rudy Giuliani (and the President) were at least problematic, specifically the focus on the company Burisma and what he now says he should have understood was targeting the Bidens. But if he could interpret these demands in such a way that they seemed facially legitimate (just a general restatement of the need to root out corruption in Ukraine) then he could provide what they were asking for in good conscience and advance the policy aims he genuinely seems to have believed in.

Burisma did have a reputation of corruption and even though he thought the claims about the 2016 election were baseless, what harm would there really be in looking into them? In other words, by adopting a kind of willful blindness to what was actually happening he could try to address Giuliani and Co’s demands with a clean conscience.

This is a microcosm of what the whole country is facing, and especially those involved in running the federal government and its national security functions.

One of the interesting themes of these hearings is the question of who controls US foreign policy: the President or the sum of the “interagency” or bureaucratic policy making process. In a narrow sense it is absolutely right that if all the President’s advisors (in the sense of the sum of everyone at State, DOD, the NSC, Intelligence Community, etc) decide on one policy and the President disagrees, the President’s choice governs. This is elementary. And if you listen to the various testimonies no one who has spoken as a witness has said otherwise. But there’s a part of this that bears closer examination. Because it gets at the underbelly of so-called theories of “unitary executive” power.

Alexander Vindman’s occasionally halting delivery, slightly nerdy appearance underscores an impression of an essentially guileless individual. He’s an almost unrealistically novelistic player in this drama.

Vindman’s appearance is a not terribly subtle reminder that the US often needs a continuing flow of immigrants committed to American values to counter balance native born Americans who are eager to betray them.

Two new deposition transcripts have been released this evening, for David Holmes and David Hale.

Folks on the right are focusing on statements from departed NSC Director Tim Morrison’s deposition in which he says he “had concerns about Lt. Col. Vindman’s judgment.” We don’t know a lot about Alexander Vindman. So perhaps there are issues with his judgement. On the basis of the available evidence though I’d take Vindman’s judgment over Morrison’s, in large part because he immediately reported the substance of Trump’s July 25th call with Zelensky to the White House Counsel’s office. Morrison simply recommended access to it be restricted, not that that there was anything wrong with what happened. But there’s an aspect of Vindman’s testimony I’ve been wanting to highlight since I read it soon after its release.