Fiona Hill Testimony

[TexasTiger 12,828]

Anyone hear any info? Testified all day and pushed back on WH privilege claims since it doesn’t apply when there is government misconduct.

[AUDub 11,137]

Seeing the latest tweets? How badly do.you have to **** it up that John Bolton ends up being the only adult in the room? 

 

[homersapien 11,357]

I'm looking forward to Bolton testifying, assuming he's asked:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/15/bolton-may-get-last-laugh/

 

John Bolton might get the last laugh

By

Jennifer Rubin 

Opinion writer

Oct. 15, 2019 at 9:45 a.m. EDT

When President Trump declared in September that he had fired John Bolton as national security adviser, despite the latter’s claim that he had quit, you just knew that was not the last we would hear from Bolton. The pugnacious hawk had clashed with Trump on Russia, North Korea, an invitation to Camp David to the Taliban (seems like a year ago that one happened) and more. Bolton’s rush to the media to tell his side of the story after his resignation also signaled that he would not go quietly.

As the leaks over the Ukraine scandal multiplied, several of the news accounts citing former officials contained exonerating statements to the effect that Bolton objected to Rudolph W. Giuliani’s machinations and opposed halting aid to Ukraine. That was a telltale sign that Bolton, an adept government infighter with strong media ties, was likely behind some of the revelations.

Fast forward to Monday’s testimony before House lawmakers from Fiona Hill, formerly the National Security Council’s top Russia expert who reported to Bolton. The Post reports:

In a closed-door session that lasted roughly 10 hours, Hill told lawmakers that she confronted Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, about Giuliani’s activities which, she testified, were not coordinated with the officials responsible for carrying out U.S. foreign policy, these people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to disclose details of her deposition.

In what surely will be long-remembered phrases, she reportedly testified that Bolton had called Giuliani a “hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up” and had declared “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and [acting chief of staff Mick] Mulvaney are cooking up.” Aside from adding some colorful commentary to the Giuliani-Trump skullduggery, Bolton’s reported statements confirm that pressure on Ukraine to investigate former vice president Joe Biden was not part of official U.S. policy (i.e. was a personal/partisan matter Trump delegated to his fix-it guy) and that Bolton recognized it was inappropriate, if not illegal.

Bolton very likely will be called to testify. As other witnesses have done, he might be able to substantiate that the decision to hold up aid (was this the “drug deal” to which he reportedly referred?), once again, contradicted U.S. policy that sought to encourage anti-corruption measures, and not to encourage the current government to manufacture dirt on Trump’s political opponent nor to cooperate in Trump’s delusional conspiracy theory that Russia had not really interfered in the 2016 election.

Bolton also might be able to testify, as Hill apparently did, to a critical meeting. The Post recounts:

Bolton and Sondland met in early July with then-special envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker, Hill and Energy Secretary Rick Perry. During the meeting, Sondland’s agenda for Ukraine began to become clear, when he blurted out to the other officials present that there were “investigations that were dropped that need to be started up again,” according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter. The officials understood him to be referring to Burisma, the energy company, and Biden — something that made Bolton go “ballistic” after the meeting, the official said.

The willingness of former Trump aides (Kurt Volker, Bolton, Hill, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s former senior aide Michael McKinley) to testify to key events over the objections of bogus White House claims of executive privilege allow the impeachment investigators to begin piecing together a consistent, well-documented account of Trump’s efforts to go around government officials to act in ways contrary to U.S. interests (e.g., holding up aid that Ukraine needed to protect itself from Russia) to serve his own political ends. Once a couple of aides came forward to testify, others have felt emboldened to speak out as well.

Now, let’s not treat Bolton as a hero. He did not direct Hill (nor go himself) to the FBI to report on Giuliani’s conduct. He did not leave his post until weeks later. He has not publicly accused Trump of wrongdoing nor attested to his temperamental and intellectual unfitness. However, all of that may yet happen.

Bolton has the rare opportunity to settle personal scores with Trump, Giuliani and the White House partisans; clear himself of legal wrongdoing; and save the country from a president who is the pawn of sweet-talking dictators who can appeal to Trump’s overweening vanity. A chance like that doesn’t come around more than once in a career. 

 

[homersapien 11,357]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/15/john-boltons-eruption-shows-that-trumps-defenses-are-collapsing/

John Bolton’s eruption shows that Trump’s defenses are collapsing

By

Greg Sargent 

Opinion writer

Oct. 15, 2019 at 8:56 a.m. EDT

Donald Trump’s explicitly declared position in the scandal consuming his presidency is that pressuring a foreign power to “investigate” a leading domestic political opponent absolutely falls within his rightfully exercised authority. Trump has said this, and so has his White House counsel, making this the White House’s official political, substantive and legal position.

But this defense is cracking up. That’s because we’re now learning, one after another, that all of the people around him knew that it was grievously wrong — that is, all except for those who were carrying out Trump’s corrupt scheme.

As this becomes more public, Trump’s position will grow increasingly unsustainable — not just as a rhetorical matter but also in terms of whether he’ll be able to keep the support of Senate Republicans, his final line of defense.

The latest domino to fall is John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser. The New York Times reports that in July, Bolton grew so alarmed by efforts to pressure Ukraine to launch “investigations” into Joe Biden and his son that he instructed an aide to alert White House lawyers.

That aide is Fiona Hill, a former senior White House adviser on Russia and Europe. Hill testified about this exchange with Bolton to House investigators as part of their impeachment inquiry. Hill told them that Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, Trump lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney had run what The Post calls a “shadow” campaign to pressure Ukraine to do Trump’s political bidding.

“I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up,” Bolton reportedly told Hill to tell White House lawyers.

Crucially, this eruption came after a meeting in early July at which Sondland made it clear that the goal of this shadow campaign was to get Ukraine to revive investigations into Burisma, the company on whose board Biden’s son Hunter sat. This confirmed for Bolton that the goal was to leverage Ukraine into acting as Trump’s weapon against Biden — that is, by manufacturing smears designed to debilitate him in the 2020 election.

That made Bolton go “ballistic.” And on another occasion, Bolton described Giuliani, one of the scheme’s ringleaders, as “a hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up.”

This long-running plot, of course, culminated in Trump’s July 25 call in which he pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to undertake investigations that would undercut the idea that Russia interfered on Trump’s behalf in 2016, and again help him rig the election in 2020.

Trump’s defense is collapsing

It is striking how many people around Trump did not share his view that this conduct was entirely unobjectionable, or, as Trump keeps putting it, “perfect.” The story now is that those ranks are swelling fast. Let’s review:

• As the whistleblower detailed, White House officials were “deeply disturbed” by the July 25 call — so much so that they loaded the transcript onto an ultra-classified computer system normally reserved for the most sensitive information in the government’s possession.
• We subsequently learned that at least four national security officials were so unnerved by this ongoing pressure campaign that they raised concerns with White House legal staff both before and just after the call.
• And now we know this conduct made Bolton go “ballistic” and fear it would “blow up” the White House, leading him to also alert White House lawyers to it.

Trump’s stance continues to be that this pressure was entirely within his legitimate authority. The White House counsel’s letter, which we now know was largely dictated by Trump, declares that there was “nothing wrong” with the July 25 call as detailed in the rough White House transcript. That transcript shows Trump explicitly naming Joe Biden while demanding investigations.

Thus, Trump’s explicit position is that pressuring Ukraine to help him smear a leading domestic political opponent, not merely to investigate unspecified “corruption,” was absolutely fine. In his own words, Trump has flatly said that Ukraine “should investigate the Bidens.”

Trump puts GOP senators in untenable spot

I submit that this is a key reason vulnerable GOP senators are having so much trouble with their responses to this scandal. You probably saw that viral video of Colorado’s Cory Gardner repeatedly refusing to say whether it’s appropriate for the president to ask a foreign leader to investigate a political rival:

Breaking: @SenCoryGardner refuses to answer question whether it is appropriate for the President to ask a foreign leader to investigate a rival. Quite the exchange in Denver #copolitics #kdvr pic.twitter.com/5Y0EYOcKjM

— Joe St. George (@JoeStGeorge) October 10, 2019

Iowa’s Joni Ernst was also caught on video pulling a similar homina homina homina. The rub here is they can’t condemn this, because Trump continues to tell the GOP base that this conduct was, and is, the correct thing to do.

It’s a form of poetic justice: Trump’s shamelessness, his brash and open flaunting of his ability to engage in bottomless corruption to rig the next election on his own behalf with impunity, is precisely what’s making it harder for Republicans to distance themselves from it.

ut as more and more people around Trump let it be known that they viewed this corrupt conduct with horror, this refusal to condemn that conduct will become impossible to sustain. That will edge those senators into a position where they are acknowledging it’s indefensible while saying it’s not impeachable.

That stance may be just tenable enough to allow Republican senators to vote against removing Trump. But the increasing precarity of this balancing act will further weaken those of them who are already vulnerable to losing reelection. And as they withdraw their defense of Trump on the substance of his corruption, that will weaken him politically as well.

[autigeremt 6,589]

Resign you backstabbing idiot. Let Pence get in there and try to resemble the presidency. 😠😠