Dems, GOP to vie for narrative — on TV
WASHINGTON — Impeachable or not?
Both Democrats and Republicans see the televised impeachment hearings starting this week as their first and best opportunity to shape public opinion about President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.
Democrats believe the testimony will paint a vivid picture of presidential misconduct. Republicans say it will demonstrate just how lacking the evidence is for impeachment.
They agree on one thing: The stakes are very high.
Democrats plan a narrow focus in the hearings, and a narrative retelling of Trump’s pressure on Ukraine to investigate Democrats as his administration withheld military aid to an Eastern European ally on Russia’s border.
All three witnesses this week — top Ukraine diplomat William Taylor, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent and former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch — expressed concerns about Trump’s efforts in closeddoor depositions last month.
This time they’ll be on live TV — and newscasts for days
afterward — for all Americans to see and hear.
The Democrats see all three as highly credible, detail oriented and wellpositioned to tell that story to the American people.
“This is a very simple, straightforward act,” said California Rep. Jackie Speier, a member of the House intelligence committee, which is conducting the hearings. “The president broke the law. He went on a telephone call with the president of Ukraine and said I have a favor, though, and then proceeded to ask for an investigation of his rival.”
Democrats say their best evidence isn’t even from the witnesses themselves, but from the rough transcript of that July call between Trump himself and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Trump asked for the “favor” of the investigations as Zelenskyy mentioned the military aid.
The witnesses have added detail on the circumstances of the call and have told investigators of concerns swirling in different corners of the administration as Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, pushed for the probes into Democratic rival Joe Biden and his family and into a possible Ukraine role in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Taylor and Kent will testify on Wednesday,
Yovanovitch on Friday. Yovanovitch plays a central role in the inquiry, as her ouster at Trump and Giuliani’s direction in May raised questions throughout the U.S. diplomatic community. Taylor was brought in to replace her and navigated Trump’s demands throughout the summer as the president brought his requests directly to Zelenskyy.
Kent is a senior State Department official overseeing Ukraine who told investigators that he understood, as other witnesses did, the military aid to be in exchange for the investigations — the quid pro quo that is at the heart of the Democratic probe.
Trump — who will surely be watching at the White House — has strongly denied any quid pro quo, and has bashed the diplomats by saying that none of them had firsthand knowledge of his thinking.
“It seems that nobody has any firsthand knowledge,” the president said last week.
Republican questioning of the witnesses at the hearings is expected to turn on that point.
None of the witnesses has testified to relevant conversations that they had with Trump himself, and several of the accounts involve conversations they heard about from other people. While closed-door testimony from multiple witnesses has largely reinforced the same story, Republicans say that the Democrats don’t have enough direct evidence.