I wanted to share with you a few thoughts about the impeachment hearings which have just concluded.

1. I have grave misgivings about concluding this inquiry without receiving testimony from Mick Mulvaney, Rudy Giuliani, John Bolton, Lev Parnas and a number of others. This isn’t to say that I don’t understand the argument for not doing so. It is a strong logic. Doing so could lead to months of slow-rolling before a judiciary at best disinclined to get between the President and Congress and at worst reflexively friendly to President Trump. It’s also true that the evidence of the core wrongdoing is already overwhelming. By any reasonable standard we know more than enough to merit removal from office. But the layers of wrongdoing beneath that surface layer are, I suspect, profound. It’s not an easy question. But ending the factual inquiry here worries me greatly.

GOP staff counsel Steve Castor walked Fiona Hill into this critical portion of testimony. It’s understated in a way but for those who have ears to hear it, this is devastating testimony.

This is a critical, critical portion of testimony. pic.twitter.com/aO7gJBG8Ia

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) November 21, 2019

Former Trump NSC aide is about to detonate all of Devin Nunes’ bogus conspiracy theories … to his face, no less. Watch here and follow here.

From Daily Beast:

Lev Parnas, an indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani, helped arrange meetings and calls in Europe for Rep. Devin Nunes in 2018, Parnas’  lawyer Ed MacMahon told The Daily Beast.

…

The travel came as Nunes, in his role on the House Intelligence Committee, was working to investigate the origins of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian election meddling.

There’s been a lot of talk today about Gordon Sondland underbusing the President or the Vice President or the Secretary of State. Only that’s not entirely right. Close but not quite. You’ll notice this in his insistence that he had no recollection of telling Kyiv Embassy official David Holmes that all Trump cared about was “Biden.” Perhaps Holmes misremembered it. But I doubt it. When it came to key conversations with the President his memory seemed to fray, though he generally wouldn’t dispute the recollections of others.

Clarifying many points in the Ukraine scandal drama requires simply stating the obvious. And nowhere more so than in this now notorious Trump/Sondland phone call in which the President barked “no quid pro quo” to Sondland multiple times and said he wanted “nothing” from President Zelensky of Ukraine. The President and his supporters have rather implausibly put this forward as total exoneration. After all, in a private call, when asked what he wanted he said “no quid pro quo.”

But of course the timing and even the contextual logic is key.

Read More

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.