Ambassador Sondland’s bombshell tough for Rep. Biggs

As the impeachment hearings progress it is getting more and more difficult for apologists and evidence deniers like Arizona’s Rep. Andy Biggs.

Even former President Bill Clinton’s prosecutor, Kenneth Starr, said of Tuesday’s impeachment hearing, “This has been one of those bombshell days.”

The United States ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, said that President Donald Trump had, indeed, tied American aid and a meeting at the White House to Ukraine’s willingness to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden.

As Sondland put it, “Was there a ‘quid pro quo?’ The answer is yes.”

Sondland also indicated that the strong-arming of Ukraine was known to many in the Trump administration, including acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and Cabinet secretaries.

“Everyone was in the loop. It was no secret,” Sondland said.

Sondland isn’t a professional diplomat. He is the founder and former chairman of Provenance Hotels and co-founder of the merchant bank Aspen Capital. He gave a million dollars to the Trump’s inaugural committee.

That bought him an ambassadorship, but it wouldn’t buy him a getout-of-jail-free card.

So now what for politicians like Biggs, the apologist in chief for President Donald Trump.

In the a recent Fox News op-ed the congressman wrote:

“The latest attempt to remove President Trump from office by Democrats rests upon the anonymous complaint of an unidentified government employee.” Wrong.

And he knows it. The impeachment inquiry’s hearing is not based on the whistleblower but on testimony from individuals like William B. Taylor, Jr., the top American diplomat in Ukraine, who laid down the first couple of bricks in a damning wall of evidence that Trump tried to extort Ukraine into investigating rival Joe Biden. On testimony from Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council official, and Jennifer Williams, a foreign policy aid to Vice President Mike Pence. On Sondland. And even more to come.

The whistleblower Biggs rails about learned of what he believed to be potentially illegal behavior and went through the proper channels to report it.

He contacted the Office of the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, which found his concerns to be credible and urgent.

In his op-ed, Biggs tries to dismiss this by saying this particular whistleblower “isn’t a typical witness — he is merely a gossip.”

Again, it isn’t the whistleblower’s testimony that is going to provide the impeachable evidence against Trump.

It is witnesses who again and again point to the quid pro quo – this for that – extortion effort designed to strong-arm Ukraine into investigating

Joe Biden.

Being unable to refute what those witnesses have said previously to investigators and what they are now saying in public, Biggs and other Republicans have decided to divert attention from the evidence by attacking the whistleblower. And the witnesses.

It’s a low blow, even for someone like Biggs.

The whole point of the whistleblower statutes is to protect individuals who come forward with information about potential wrongdoing within the government, up to and including the president.

If the president has nothing to hide and wants to clear up any misconceptions he would allow the administration officials who’ve been subpoenaed to testify rather than ordering them not to appear.

Better yet, he would testify himself.

The impeachment hearings aren’t about attacking the whistleblower, they’re about holding even our highest officeholder to account.

Biggs may believe Donald Trump can do no wrong.

The Founding Fathers knew better.