The House committees conducting the impeachment inquiry released transcripts Saturday of the closed-door testimonies earlier this month of outgoing National Security Council aide Tim Morrison and Vice President Mike Pence aide Jennifer Williams.
Both Morrison and Williams raised their concerns about the now-infamous July call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that was part of effort to dig up false allegations against Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
Earlier this month, the New York Times reported that Morrison confirmed in his testimony that there was a quid pro quo associated with Trump’s decision to withhold military aid from Ukraine.
Last week, two sources familiar with Williams’ testimony told CNN that she found the conversation between Trump and Zelensky to be out of the ordinary because it did not have the typical tone of a diplomatic call. Williams testified that she did not bring up her concerns regarding the call with her superiors.
Read Morrison’s testimony here.
Read Williams’ testimony here.
Meta-point: both links in the article go to
house.gov.If you support the House impeachment effort, please click on both links, even if you don’t intend to read them. If I were the House, I’d use traffic numbers as an insight into public interest in the details. This is perhaps a zero-effort way to resist Trump/GOP.
There is a lot here about the handling and preservation of a particular version of the “transcript” of the phone call. Also weird stuff (in Morrison’s) about John Eisenberg saying that the Executive Secretary made a mistake by putting it on the highly classified system. I do hope at some point that particular aspect of the cover-up sees sunlight, and Eisenberg (and Barr) are punished for their parts in a criminal conspiracy.
Putting them on the code word server is really shady, especially since not all of Trump’s calls went on there.
Hmm.
Did this upset Trump so much that they sent him off to Walter Reed for an “early” physical?
He’s looked even more unhealthy than usual lately.
There may be something here akin to the “Butterfield Moment” where Alexander Butterfield revealed the existence of the Nixon tapes. I’m referring to the following exchange on page 53 of the transcript:
This is the first time I’ve seen an admission that there was some kind of word-for-word record made of the call – albeit by a computer instead of a stenographer.