Update: Looks like this might be a longish recess – for six House votes – so OPEN THREAD
Hill And Holmes Testimony After The BreakPost + Comments (83)
Cheryl Rofer wrote at Balloon Juice from 2017-21.
Cheryl is a retired chemist who has has been particularly active with nuclear policy. Cheryl has her own blog, Nuclear Diner, and she also posts at Lawyers, Guns & Money.
Twitter: @CherylRofer
This post is in: Impeachment Hearings, Impeachment Inquiry, Live Blogging, Open Threads
Update: Looks like this might be a longish recess – for six House votes – so OPEN THREAD
Hill And Holmes Testimony After The BreakPost + Comments (83)
This post is in: Impeachment Hearings, Impeachment Inquiry, Live Blogging
The beat goes on. I’m grateful to C Span for putting their coverage on YouTube, so it’s easy to embed. I never could figure it out otherwise.
Fiona Hill is a Russia expert who was at Brookings before she went to Trump’s NSC. David Holmes is the foreign service political officer who overheard the famous July 26 phonecall between Trump and Gordon Sondland. He’s been described as an aide, but the political officer at an embassy is a lot more than that, in charge of learning about political goings-on inside the country and reporting to the Ambassador.
It’s raining here again today, so I have an excuse not to take the kitties out for their morning walk, but I may give it a try when the Republican questioning starts. And I think I’ll make biscuits and creamed chicken for lunch – comfort food.
Thursday Impeachment Hearings – Fiona Hill and David HolmesPost + Comments (248)
This post is in: Impeachment Hearings, Impeachment Inquiry, Live Blogging
Starting up again. That was a short lunch break.
This post is in: Impeachment Hearings, Impeachment Inquiry, Live Blogging
I have questions for him.
Sondland is in a heap of trouble. Other testimony puts him at the center of the President’s demands for Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelinsky to announce an investigation into the Bidens. Sondland has changed his deposition to the House Intelligence Committee.
This post is in: Impeachment Hearings, Impeachment Inquiry, Live Blogging
These two witnesses were requested by the Republican minority. Not clear to me they’ll help Trump, but we’ll see. Volker is a particular enigma.
Testimony of Kurt Volker and Tim MorrisonPost + Comments (219)
This post is in: Impeachment Hearings, Impeachment Inquiry
I expect that Jennifer Williams’s and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman’s testimony this morning will confirm other witnesses’ testimony, with few if any surprises.
The most interesting testimony this week is likely to come from Kurt Volker (this afternoon) and Gordon Sondland (Wednesday). It is hard to predict what they will say. A report last night said that Sondland is changing his deposition again.
Volker has been the Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations, the negotiations on getting Russia out of eastern Ukraine. He has been a foreign service officer, like Chargé d’Affaires William Taylor and others who have testified. And yet he was one of the “Three Amigos,” Sondland and Secretary of Energy Rick Perry being the other two. He seems to have known about the Giuliani channel into Ukraine and worked with it. Seemingly working for the United States of America, but with some special stuff on the side for Donald Trump personally. Perhaps we will learn how he reconciled those two things.
Sondland’s career has been building a hotel chain. As a big donor to the Trump Inauguration Committee, he got in line for an ambassadorship and is now Ambassador to the European Union. There is nothing in his history that suggests he is in any way qualified for that job. He stretched (or was told to stretch) his responsibilities to Ukraine, which is not part of the EU. In fact, having the American Ambassador to the EU messing around with Ukraine would be likely to irritate Russia and raise questions in other places about US intentions.
Adam Schiff and the House Intelligence Committee are doing a great job in the hearings, but I have some questions of my own for Gordon Sondland.
1) Did Donald Trump suggest the job of Ambassador to the EU, or did you?
2) How did he describe what he wanted you to do in the job? Do you have a written job description?
3) Did you contact current or former ambassadors to learn how to ambassador? If you did, was that before or after the job offer?
4) Do you know that Ukraine is not a member of the EU? That Russia feels strongly about that? Did you know when you told Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch that you were in charge of Ukraine?
5) Did you at any time meet with or take instruction from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo?
6) Did you have any training in security issues? Did Trump tell you to disregard security precautions?
7) Are you aware that the Federal Records Act applies to your communications with the President?
This post is in: Media, Open Threads, Assholes, General Stupidity
South Dakota, like a lot of other rural states, has a meth problem. Today they rolled out a campaign to deal with it.
Evidently nobody along the way said, um, that could be taken in two ways.
The negligence here is cruel. Let us hope those are models in those photos, and not real people who thought they were helping to deal with South Dakota’s drug problem.
How does something this bad happen? Lack of diversity? An ad agency just in it for the money?