‘NOW’ I SEE BIDEN TWIST Ruffalo gets ‘dark’ Capitol Hill reaction
Ukraine envoy flips on Don, Rudy; attacked vet insists ‘right matters’
President Trump’s congressional boosters probably didn’t see this one coming.
Kurt Volker — who testified in the impeachment inquiry Tuesday at the request of Republicans — kicked off his televised appearance by stunningly admitting that he “now” realizes Trump used U.S. military aid as leverage to get Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden’s family.
The former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine made the unexpected about-face during a blockbuster day in the impeachment inquiry that featured public testimony from three other key witnesses, including Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a Brooklyn-bred Iraq War veteran who still serves as a Ukraine expert on the White House National Security Council.
Volker, who was appointed to his former job with Trump’s blessing, said testimony since his closed-door deposition on Oct. 3 has made clear the president held up $391 million in U.S. military assistance to Ukraine in a quid pro quo bid to get the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to publicly announce an investigation targeting the Bidens.
In his initial deposition, which was the first one in the inquiry, Volker testified there wasn’t such a link.
On Tuesday, he faulted himself for not realizing it sooner.
“In hindsight, I now understand that others saw the idea of investigating possible corruption involving the Ukrainian company, Burisma, as equivalent to investigating former Vice President Biden,” Volker said as part of a lengthy opening statement, referring to the gas company on whose board Biden’s son Hunter once sat. “I saw them as very different — the former being appropriate and unremarkable, the latter being unacceptable.”
He continued, “In retrospect, I should have seen that connection differently, and had I done so, I would have raised my own objections.”
But Volker’s claim that he hadn’t realized the Biden angle until now raised some eyebrows from Democrats.
Volker worked closely with Gordon Sondland — Trump’s handpicked ambassador to the European Union who’s set to testify publicly Wednesday — on the shadowy effort to pressure Zelensky’s administration into investigating Burisma and debunked rightwing claims that anti-Trump Ukrainians interfered in the 2016 U.S. election.
As part of that work, Volker was privy to text message conversations released by impeachment leaders in which investigations meant to target the Bidens were openly discussed.
As far back as May, Trump and Rudy Giuliani were also publicly stating that Biden needed to face scrutiny over unsubstantiated claims that he used his vice presidential pulpit to help his son evade prosecution on corruption charges in Ukraine relating to his seat on Burisma’s board.
Still, Volker maintained he didn’t know Trump, Giuliani and others had “raised Vice President Biden with the Ukrainians, or had conflated the investigation of possible Ukrainian corruption, with investigation of the former vice president.”
“In retrospect, for the Ukrainians, it clearly would have been confusing,” said Volker, who was testifying in an afternoon session alongside Tim Morrison, a former senior official on Trump’s National Security Council.
In another blow to the
Republicans, Volker threw Giuliani under the bus and said the ex-mayor’s unsubstantiated corruption claims about the Bidens “did not seem at all credible.”
“The accusation that Vice President Biden acted inappropriately did not seem at all credible to me,” Volker said, undermining the case repeatedly trumpeted by the president’s congressional allies in the impeachment hearings.
Vindman — who appeared earlier in the day alongside Jennifer Williams, an aide to Vice President Mike Pence — didn’t divulge any new details in his testimony but offered scathing rebukes of Trump’s bid for Ukrainian dirt.
“It was inappropriate, it was improper for the president to demand an investigation into a political opponent,” said Vindman, who listened in on the infamous July 25 call on which Trump asked Zelensky to do him “a favor” by launching the Biden and 2016 election investigations.
“It is improper for the president of the United States to demand a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen and a political opponent,” Vindman said.
Dressed in his military
blues and wearing the Purple Heart he received during his stint in Iraq, Vindman repeatedly invoked patriotism and a devotion to “truth” and “duty” as the reason for his speaking out against the president.
Vindman, who fled the Soviet Union with his family as a young boy and grew up as a refugee in Brighton Beach, said that if Zelensky had pursued Trump’s desired investigations, “it would be interpreted as a partisan play and it would result in Ukraine losing bipartisan support from the U.S.”
In the middle of Vindman’s testimony, the official White
House account attacked him over Twitter — even though he remains a National Security Council staffer.
“Tim Morrison, Alexander Vindman’s former boss, testified in his deposition that he had concerns about Vindman’s judgment,” the account posted.
In his opening statement, Morrison, who resigned last month, made clear he would not use his testimony to drag down his former co-workers: “I have great respect for my former colleagues from the NSC … I am not here today to question their character or integrity.”
During a later appearance at the White House, Trump kept himself from outright attacking Vindman and instead claimed he knew nothing about him.
“I don’t know him. I never saw the man,” Trump said of his own top Ukraine expert.
Over the past few days, however, the president has without evidence claimed Vindman, Williams and other impeachment witnesses are “Never Trumpers.”
Vindman blasted Trump’s insults as “cowardly.”
“The vile character attacks on these distinguished and honorable public servants is reprehensible,” Vindman said. “We are better than callow and cowardly attacks.”
When Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) asked whether he was concerned about the consequences of testifying against the president, Vindman took a patriotic stand.
“I knew I was assuming a lot of risk,” he said. “[But] this is America. This is the country I served and defended, that all my brothers have served — and here — right matters.”
Tuesday’s impeachment proceedings wrapped up at 8:30 p.m. after nearly 11 hours of testimony.
WASHINGTON — Actor Mark Ruffalo seemed to be as toxic to Republicans at a Capitol Hill hearing on cancer-causing chemicals Tuesday as the chemicals themselves.
Ruffalo (inset), who stars in an upcoming movie titled “Dark Waters” about a real-life crusading lawyer who took on chemical giant DuPont, was one of four witnesses called to talk about chemicals in the PFAS family used in consumer products, nonstick pans and firefighting foam that have been found to cause cancer and birth defects.
The compounds are called “forever chemicals,” Ruffalo testified, because they accumulate in the blood and tissues of humans, and are linked to numerous ill health effects.
The actor’s words and presence angered Republican members of the oversight subcommittee on the environment.
“It’s unclear to me why a Hollywood actor with no scientific expertise on PFAS chemicals would be called to testify today,” said the top Republican on the subcommittee, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.).
“[Democrats] called as their star witness an actor. That’s right, an actor,” fumed Rep. Fred Keller (R-Pa.), saying the “Hulk” star Ruffalo was “an actor with no medical, no scientific or research expertise except for a few scenes as Bruce Banner.”
Ruffalo got better reviews from Rep. Alexandria OcasioCortez (D-Queens, Bronx), who pointed out a movie — or at least the trailer Republicans said they watched — didn’t compare with the millions being spent by corporations to head off relatively modest proposed steps such as banning the dumping of PFAS chemicals in water.
“There are people spending far more money to purchase our public policy than a movie trailer right now,” OcasioCortez said.
The actor wasn’t ruffled by the barbs. “I’m an American, I’m a citizen,” Ruffalo told the Daily News.