Key takeaways
Witnesses hold their own
Taylor and Kent laid out not only their concerns about the president’s call and the push by his allies to investigate the Bidens, but also the danger of pressuring a strategic ally for what they saw as political gain for Trump.
The taunts came early from Republicans. In his opening statement, Devin Nunes, the top GOP lawmaker on the Intelligence Committee, mockingly congratulated the witnesses “for passing the Democrats’ Star Chamber auditions.”
Taylor: Sondland said Trump ‘cares more’ about Biden probe than Ukraine
Taylor told the committee about a phone call between Trump and Gordon
Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, in which the president seemed to indicate he was more interested in having the
Bidens investigated than he was in U.S. policy toward Ukraine. The details of the July 26 call, relayed to
Taylor by an aide who overheard it, was a new revelation that had not come out of the closed-door hearings held in previous weeks.
Republicans focused on Ukraine corruption – not on Trump’s call
Republicans focused their questioning on a debunked claim that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 presidential election in what appeared to be an effort to support
Trump’s campaign to push Ukraine to root out corruption. Trump and
Giuliani have publicly and privately pushed the theory that Ukraine meddled in the election. The U.S. intelligence community has found no evidence of such meddling.
Kent: Investigate Burisma owner
Kent handed Republicans a partial victory by saying the Ukrainian oligarch owner of gas company Burisma should be investigated for paying a bribe to kill an investigation into the company.