Day 3 of the impeachment hearings are taking place today, as 2 White House national security aides who expressed concerns about a July 2019 phone call between Pres. Trump and Ukraine president Zelensky appeared on Capitol Hill, becoming the first current White House officials to testify in public in the Democrats’ impeachment investigation.
This morning’s hearing featured Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the National Security Council’s Ukraine expert, and Jennifer Williams, a national security aide to vice president Pence.
The former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker, and National Security Council official Tim Morrison are testifying in the afternoon.
This post will be updated as additional info rolls in…
At 11:23 a.m. ET, CBS News’ Major Garrett took note of the Republicans’ attack on the news media, specifically ranking Republican Rep. Devin Nunes scathing remarks:
The country saw.. in the opening statement of the ranking Republican, Devin Nunes, a hatchet attack on the American media, saying the American media is partly responsible, a tool of the Democratic party, just an echo chamber of a false narrative. We had plenty of time to ask these questions relevant questions about their direct knowledge of the phone call, what they had heard before it, its consistency or inconsistency with U.S. Policy. None of that was there at all… If you’re trying to say the president did nothing wrong, why not take this testimony and try to pick it apart or at least do something to suggest it may have been incomplete. Republicans did none of that. So it just strikes me that in all of their repetitive calling for direct fact witnesses, when two of them appear their line of questioning and line of commentary deals with the media and other issues, not the testimony presented or the narrative put together by the ranking Democrat, Adam Schiff, saying that this all lines up consistent with the whistle-blower testimony. I’m sort of astonished by that.
.@MajorCBS: “The country saw…in the opening statement of the ranking Republican, Devin Nunes, a hatchet attack on the American media, saying the American media is partly responsible, a tool of the Democratic party, just an echo chamber of a false narrative.” pic.twitter.com/kWNBrgkOBj
— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) November 19, 2019
ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos and contributor Chris Christie had an interesting back and forth during the first break of the morning session:
Stephanopoulos: “So, Chris Christie, what we have it issue here is if the Republicans can demonstrate the president was sincerely pursuing corruption than he is doing his job. If the Democrats can demonstrate no he wasn’t really pursuing corruption he was doing these political investigations that had nothing to do with corruption it’s an abuse of power?”
Christie: “The first thing that I’m sure every American is shocked to hear is that Donald Trump wasn’t following talking points. Credibly shocking that he wasn’t following what others told him to do. When you look at that 25th call, I’d would disagree a little bit with that. He talked about Crowd Strike, people will say there was no validity to that. I would be willing to bet you if the president were asked directly, what he would say in response, the things that I was talking about there were about corruption. So I didn’t read it like the talking point was put out. That’s what the Republican’s argument is going to be.
Stephanopoulos: “I think and you’re exactly right, this is where you get into the question, — is ignorance a defense? We know from Tom Bossert, a ABC contributor who was the president’s Homeland Security Director, from the beginning of the administration, he and others were consistently telling the president this is conspiracy theory, this has been debunked. It’s not true.”
Christie: “But you have others who he listens to, like Rudy Giuliani, and others that Giuliani was associating with who were telling him the opposite. The president might say, some of these guys were telling me this wasn’t true, other people were telling it was. my only point, to say that it’s not completely accurate in my view to say that there was no mention of corruption on there. There might be people that disagree with it. But the president would probably say, that’s what I was talking about in the words that are there. That’s what I was trying to get to. I didn’t say it artfully, but that’s what I was trying to get to [Ukraine president] Zelensky.”
Over at Fox News, Chris Wallace says he doesn’t believe Pres. Trump will testify:
“This question of President Trump, and he did lay out the possibility that he was going to testify, I would think that that would be akin to Prince Andrew testifying about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, which one British critic said was like an airplane crashing into an oil tanker causing a tsunami that set off a nuclear explosion. It’s an entertaining thing and it’s certainly got us all talking but my guess is it’s not going to happen and if it did it would be a very controversial and perhaps unwise policy by the president.”
Martha MacCallum remarked:
“A lot of what we’ve heard today is reflective in the testimony of these two people, and the things that leaked out along of the way. I think it is significant that Col. Vindman said that he saw that as a demand from the president, because of his military background. I think you’re going to hear some sort of efforts to draw him out on that, how do you know it was a demand, what makes you think that? Because some of the language in the call was, you know, ‘would you do me a favor,’ ‘if you think it might be possible,’ we’ve seen Steven Castor before try to portray that language as much softer than a demand. Obviously, Vindman admitted that he had never spoken to the president and he doesn’t know his thinking on this matter.”
According to former assistant U.S. attorney Ken Starr, Adam Schiff “won the morning.” Starr said:
“I think the morning belongs to Adam Schiff, because the symbolism is very powerful. We are moving from far-away Ukraine, with the Ambassador, the (inaudible) Bill Taylor and the State Department Foggy-Bottom George Kent, now we’re coming into the very core of the White House, itself. As opposed to those who had second, third hand information and so forth. Each is going to express, we think given their testimony previously, a profound concern about the insertion of American political concerns into the conduct of US foreign policy. It’s Adam Schiff’s morning.”
NBC Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd doesn’t think the Democrats are doing enough to make their case that Pres. Trump should be impeached:
“If the outcome they’re [Democrats] looking for is basically to disqualify the president from seeking another term … they need to be more explicit that he’s been trying to cheat on 2020 … They’re not making that argument I think as up front. You’re asking the country to make an extraordinary decision, to short circuit what would be their call and you want them to do it with less than a year to go before the election. Again, and it may be a legitimate thing to say that you have to do, I don’t know if Democrats have been as explicit as they need to be to make that case.”
