I never worked for the Snake Department, as it has become. But I fondly remember being threatened by a lobbyist by multinational corporation, BECHTEL, who said, "if you write that article, you'll never work for the State Department." I replied, "ma'am, I don't want to work for the State Department. The article was published and helped slam the door on coal slurry pipelines, defeated by 2-1 vote in the U.S. House of Representatives.
As a 17.5 year old Georgetown undergraduate, I heard Ralph Nader speak on August 28, 1974 (Feast of St. Augustine), volunteered to work for Senator Ted Kennedy the next day, and worked for EMK and then Senators Gary W. Hart (D-Colo.) and James R. Sasser (D-Tenn.)
My experience was all on the Senate side. Once upon a time, my college roommate, Edward Francis McElwain, ventured over to the House side of the Capitol, as political tourists, if not theorists (the word that autocorrect just suggested to me, thank you!). We observed House members wearing leisure suits. Not up to Senate Standards.
I don't pretend to understand the U.S. House of Representatives. The late Howard Henry Baker, Jr. (R-Tenn.), once quipped that there were two things in life that he did not understand -- "the Middle East and the House of Representatives."
But from what I've seen so far, the House Intelligence Committee and House Judiciary Committees are doing an excellent job.
From The Washington Post:
Impeachment Diary
Opinion
Are Bill Taylor’s notebooks Trump’s Nixon tapes?
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He also kept the encrypted WhatsApp messages he exchanged with Gordon Sondland, Kurt Volker, Rudy Giuliani and others at the center of the scandal. Together, they paint a near-comprehensive picture of the Ukraine imbroglio, from the ouster of the former ambassador to the attempts to condition U.S. aid and a presidential meeting on an announcement by the Ukrainian president that his country would investigate Joe Biden’s son and the Democrats.
Trump administration officials have refused to turn over documents to the impeachment inquiry. They have persuaded a dozen top officials to defy subpoenas for their testimony. But they couldn’t do anything about Bill Taylor’s notes. His scribbles and texts provided the road map that congressional investigators used to confirm Taylor’s account with other central participants.
As the deposition transcript reveals, Taylor’s notes show that White House officials knew well in advance of the president’s now-infamous call with Ukraine’s president that their actions could be problematic. Taylor recounted how Sondland, before a June call with the Ukrainian president, got the State Department not to allow stenographers on the call, as was typical. “In response to his request, they said, ‘we won’t monitor and . . . we certainly won’t transcribe because we’re going to sign off.’ ”You won’t hear anybody say, “read the transcript!” for that one.
Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, also rescheduled the call time but didn’t tell diplomats who were supposed to be on the line, Taylor testified, because Giuliani’s “irregular channel didn’t have a respect for or an interest in having the normal staff participate.”
Taylor described the July 18 video conference when a disembodied voice of a budget official said U.S. aid to Ukraine had been suspended and “the directive had come from the president.” It became his “clear understanding,” Taylor testified, that unless the Ukrainian president pursued Trump’s politically motivated investigations, he wouldn’t get the military aid or a presidential audience.
Taylor recalled that Ukrainian officials “were just desperate” upon learning the aid was held up. He said the Ukrainians understood they were being presented with a “condition” — that is, a quid pro quo — for a meeting with Trump. He recalled the ire of national security adviser John Bolton and others when they realized what Giuliani’s crew was doing.Taylor is a credible witness by virtue of his résumé: West Point. Infantry officer with the 101st Airborne in Vietnam. A diplomat under every administration since Ronald Reagan’s. He didn’t want the job when Trump officials recruited him: “I was concerned that there was . . . a snake pit in Kyiv and a snake pit here.”
But he’s also effective because he wrestles the snakes with skill. From the first moments of his deposition, Republicans interrupted with procedural complaints — “This whole hearing is out of order,” proclaimed Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) — then tried to probe him on Burisma, the Ukrainian firm that Hunter Biden advised.
Wasn’t Burisma “a shady organization”?
“I don’t want to say more than I know.”
Was Biden “tapped for the board because his dad was the vice president”?
“I’m here as a fact witness.”
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) wanted him to agree that Ukrainians “in almost all cases” supported Democrats and provided “dirt” for Hillary Clinton.
“When you say ‘Ukrainians,’ that paints a broad brush,” he replied.
He further explained that while it is acceptable for the United States to ask for help from Ukraine on possible violations of U.S. law, it’s “improper” to pressure another country to investigate violations of its own law — and extraordinary to insist that they investigate a specific company.
But that is what Trump did with Giuliani’s shadow — and shadowy — operation. They tried to conceal what they were doing in advance, cover it up later and stiff-arm the congressional investigation. But it’s all right there, in Bill Taylor’s little notebooks.
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