On Wednesday, Chad Wolf achieved something most Americans would never dream of. He was confirmed by the Senate for a senior position in the executive branch. But almost instantly, Wolf abandoned the job — DHS undersecretary for strategy, plans and policy.

A lobbyist from Mercury Public Affairs, LLC, a Paul Manafort-linked firm that drew prosecutors’ scrutiny during the Mueller investigation, was photographed with a key aide to the Ukrainian president Wednesday in Kyiv.

The stage was set.

Two embassy staffers in Kyiv, not just one, overheard a phone call in which President Donald Trump asked EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland about “the investigations,” the Associated Press reported Thursday.

Expectations were set for the first public impeachment hearing on Wednesday: Democrats would mine the two diplomat witnesses for the details of President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign against Ukraine, and Republicans would attempt to turn the same conspiracy theories Trump sought as political dirt into headline news.

But the majority of Republican inquisitors kept arms-length away from the conspiracy theories that have driven Trump’s push for investigations in Ukraine. Only three Republicans, including the panel’s staff lawyer, brought up the zany theories.

The diplomatic aide who reportedly overheard a phone call in which President Donald Trump asked the EU ambassador about “the investigations” is set to testify in the House’s impeachment inquiry Friday.

The acting ambassador to Ukraine dropped a bombshell Wednesday, testifying to a previously unknown conversation that President Trump had that directly implicated him in the pressure campaign against Ukraine.

The explosive new claim did not come up in Taylor’s closed-door testimony — the ambassador said he’d only heard a staffer’s account of the conversation a few days ago.

Rudy Giuliani’s indicted buddies delivered a message directly to President Donald Trump last year that the ambassador to Ukraine at the time was against him, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.

The House impeachment inquiry will enter a new phase Wednesday when the congressional investigation grills its first witnesses in public.

Acting Ukraine Ambassador Bill Taylor has emerged as a key witness in the House’s impeachment inquiry. But this week, he made quite a statement in the court of public opinion, in the form of a strikingly topical op-ed.