GOP turns focus on Biden in hearings
Republicans have demanded that Joe Biden’s son and a whistleblower should give evidence during highly anticipated televised impeachment hearings this week.
America’s big three networks — CBS, NBC and ABC — have announced wall- towall coverage of the sessions and will break into scheduled programming to screen them live so voters can watch the case against Donald Trump.
The three witnesses at the hearings on Wednesday and Friday will be George Kent, a top official from the state department, William Taylor, a U. S. diplomat in Ukraine, and Marie Yovanovitch, the former U. S. ambassador to Ukraine.
However, Republicans want to hear from the whistleblower who kick- started the impeachment inquiry after complaining about a July 25 telephone call between Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president.
Trump is accused of withholding US$ 392 million in military aid in an effort to pressure Zelensky into investigating Biden and his son Hunter for corruption. Trump vehemently denies doing so.
Hunter Biden sat on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, while his father, as vice- president, was heading Ukraine policy. The Bidens deny any wrongdoing.
Devin Nunes, a congressman who is the lead Republican on the House intelligence committee, which will host the televised impeachment hearings, demanded Hunter Biden and the whistleblower appear.
But Adam Schiff, the Democrat committee chairman, has refused to call them, and accused Republicans of trying to turn impeachment into a “sham investigation of the Bidens.”
The impeachment inquiry sessions are being televised 46 years after America was transfixed by the Watergate hearings, which were watched at least in part by around three-quarters of the U.S. population.
A major difference this time will be the role of social media, with Republicans and Democrats able to react instantly to developments.
In recent days, Republicans have appeared increasingly fractured over how to defend the president. Some have stuck to Trump’s description of his call with Zelenskiy as “perfect,” and maintained there was no “quid pro quo” offered by the president. Others have suggested there was an “appropriate quid pro quo,” or that his behaviour raised concerns but did not rise to the level of impeachment. There were also some who refused to discuss the matter at all, on the basis that they would be jurors in an eventual Senate trial of Trump.
Trump attended a football game in Tuscaloosa, Ala., over the weekend, where more than 100,000 packed into a stadium. When the president appeared, he was cheered and there were chants of “U. S.A., U. S.A.” — a reception in sharp contrast to the booing when he attended a baseball game in Washington two weeks ago.