Jonathan Allen
Meanwhile,
as Democrats moved one step closer to a House floor vote on impeachment
that they expect to hold before Christmas, a string of current and
former administration officials collectively described for the House
Intelligence Committee over the last two weeks how the president
directed a concerted effort to aid his own re-election efforts at the
expense of U.S. national security interests.
"The question
for impeachment is abuse of power," said Kim Wehle, a professor at the
University of Baltimore School of Law who worked on Independent Counsel
Kenneth Starr's investigation of President Bill Clinton.
"There
is no Trump narrative laying out a legitimate public policy rationale
for how the president, through Giuliani, treated Ukraine — by refusing a
meeting and withholding aid needed to fight Russia — other than
entrenching his own power."
Trump's counter-offensive was left to
Republican allies, who spent most of their time during the hearings suggesting
that the president was justifiably concerned that Ukraine had framed
Russia for interfering in the 2016 election to harm him and that matters
involving Biden merited an investigation announcement ordered up by the
president and pursued by senior executive branch officials.
Fiona
Hill, the former deputy national security adviser under Trump,
testified Thursday that the idea that Ukraine interfered in the 2016
campaign is a "fictional narrative" that was "perpetrated and
propagated" by Russia.
Republicans on the
committee repeatedly noted that none of the witnesses were able to cite
Trump directly conditioning aid on Ukraine opening political
investigations, and
Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland testified that the president told him "no quid pro quo" when Sondland asked what the president wanted from Ukraine in order to free up the money in early september
wever, the White House was already aware at
that point of a whistleblower complaint making its way through the
intelligence community's inspector general's office and the Justice
Department that alleged the president had improperly conditioned the
money on the announcement
of the probes.
David
Holmes, a U.S. diplomat posted in Kyiv who also testified Thursday,
said that former National Security Adviser John Bolton told an aide to
Zelenskiy on Aug. 27 that the unfreezing of military aid was conditioned
on the Ukrainian president making a favorable impression on Trump at a
planned meeting in Warsaw.
"By this point,
however, my clear impression was that the security assistance hold was
likely intended by the president either as an expression of
dissatisfaction that the Ukrainians had not yet agreed to the
Burisma/Biden investigation or as an effort to increase the pressure on
them to do so,"
Holmes testified.
Ultimately,
though, several of the witnesses who listened to a July 25 phone call
between Trump and Zelenskiy — or later read a reconstructed White House
transcript of it — concluded that the president, who already had put a
stop on the money, was connecting the assistance to the "favor" he asked
Zelinskiy to do in looking into Biden and the election-interference
issue.
"We heard Democrats lay out the elements of
bribery through witnesses," Wehle said of the possibility of impeachment
articles that go beyond "high crimes and misdemeanors" based on abuse
of power. "And we know they are concerned about witness intimidation and
obstruction of subpoenas."
Much of that remains to be determined, though
House
officials tell NBC News that the Judiciary Committee, which is
responsible for drafting articles of impeachment, is likely to take up
the next stage of the process after Thanksgiving, which may include
hearings of its own.
"We could have a
Judiciary hearing as early as that first week after Thanksgiving," said a
senior Democratic aide familiar with internal party discussions.
The process there would be relatively quick, according to a House Democratic leadership aide.
"I
think they're very happy," the aide said of party leaders. "We probably
would vote on it on the floor the third week of December."
They
say they are satisfied that they have built the case that the
president's actions merit impeachment — but have their work cut out for
them in swaying 20 or more Republicans to vote to oust him.
So far, no Senate Republican has said Trump's conduct justifies removal from office.
Comments
Post a Comment