Schiff: 'There is nothing more dangerous than an unethical president who believes they are above the law. And I would just say to people watching here at home and around the world, in the words of my great colleague: We are better than that. Adjourned!'
On Day 5 of the House impeachment hearings, Fiona Hill, a former Russia expert on the National Security Council, and David Holmes, a political counselor at U.S. embassy in Ukraine, testifed following a day of explosive testimony on Wednesday.
Schiff said Trump's alleged conduct is"far more serious" than Watergate and"beyond anything that Nixon did." Schiff noted that he was one of the most prominent holdouts against impeachment. For months, when asked by reporters about his position, he warned that pursuing impeachment along party lines would fail.
Schiff:"There is nothing more dangerous than an unethical president who believes they are above the law. And I would just say to people watching here at home and around the world, in the words of my great colleague: We are better than that. Adjourned!" https://t.co/b7LR9p2VqM pic.twitter.com/0pcVVHgSbRNunes wrapped up the scheduled public hearings by again calling the process a"show trial" and accusing the Democrats of pursuing a predetermined outcome to hurt President Trump.
"It is not credible to me that he was oblivious. He did not say Bidens, however, he said Burisma, he said 2016. I took it to mean the elections as well as Burisma," she said.Democratic Rep. Sean Maloney referenced an ABC News/Ipsos poll that found 70% of Americans think President Donald Trump’s request to a foreign leader to investigate his political rival was wrong as the hearing with Hill and Holmes wraps up.
"We have heard of U.S. officials carrying uncoordinated confusing an conflicting messages that created doubt and uncertainty in Kiev at a time when they knew [a] reformist administration has just taken office and was ready to fight corruption and work with us to advance other U.S. objectives," he said."I disagree with this sort of bungling foreign policy."
Hill said it was true and she was surprised to see it surface. The anecdote was included in a New York Times profile of Hill. "I think it was unfair for people to already call the election and to make attacks also on candidate Trump and on President Trump," she added. "He was involved in a number of other interactions you've outlined that brought him to the same conclusion."
Hill said Bolton “was escorting out the Ukrainian visitors along with Secretary Perry and Ambassadors Volker and Sondland,” after the meeting and told Hill to wait in the room. “Because by this point after having heard Giuliani over and over again on the television and all the issues that he was asserting, by this point, it was clear that Burisma was code for the Bidens because Giuliani was laying it out there. I could see why colonel was alarmed and he [Bolton] said, ‘This is inappropriate, we're the national security council and we can't be involved in this.
"He was absolutely right because he was being involved in a domestic political errand, and we were being involved in national security foreign policy, and those two things had just diverged. I was irritated with him and angry with him that he wasn't fully coordinating and I did say to him, Ambassador Sondland, I think this is all going to blow up, and here we are," Hill said.
"It was based on the fact that he didn't feel the call was properly prepared, and as I said earlier, we wanted to make sure that there was going to be a fulsome, bilateral U.S.-Ukraine agenda that was discussed, which is usual with these calls," she said.
Fiona Hill says John Bolton gave her"specific instructions" to go speak with NSC lawyers and to tell them that Bolton is,"not part of whatever drug deal that Mulvaney and Sondland are cooking up." "I've never seen anything like this in my foreign service career, someone at a lunch in a restaurant making a call on a cell phone to the president of the United States, being able to hear his voice, very distinctive personality," Holmes said.
The president notes that he has “been watching people making phone calls my entire life” and that his hearing is “great.” Hill said she wanted to make a strong point when she called for Republicans on the committee to stop perpetuating the narrative that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, saying that there was a lot of criticism of presidential candidates from all over the world during that election but that Russia especially uses those comments to create chaos in the U.S.
"I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary, and that Ukraine—not Russia—attacked us in 2016," Hill says. "I then heard President Trump ask, so is he going to do the investigation? Amb. Sondland replied that he's gonna do it." https://t.co/Q5w6PWd8D6 pic.twitter.com/nrqSHVMwB9"I then took the opportunity to ask Ambassador Sondland for his candid impression of the President’s views on Ukraine. In particular, I asked Ambassador Sondland if it was true that the President did not “give a s--t about Ukraine.
ABC's Benjamin Siegel reports from the hearing room that Holmes' testimony, like Sondland's, again underscores how limited Democrats' investigation has been by the Trump administration's refusal to cooperate with subpoenas and the impeachment inquiry. Holmes says he became concerned that even if the two presidents met Trump may not show sufficient support for Ukraine, which he said could have been more damaging to the relationship between the two countries.In his opening statement, Holmes details his knowledge of the allegations against former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, who was removed from her role, and the impact of her removal on the relationship between the U.S. and incoming Ukrainian administration.
Nunes also filed another request to bring Republican witnesses for a day of hearings, repeating calls from the minority that they be able to question Hunter Biden and the whistleblower, among others. Schiff his indicated he will not call those witnesses to testify. Democrats said they refused to sign on to the report because they didn't find the GOP findings credible, and because Republicans failed to interview a number of witnesses.
"Trump sought to weaken Biden, and to refute the fact that his own election had been helped by a Russian hacking and dumping operation and Russian social media campaign directed by Vladimir Putin," he said. In her career, Hill says, became a"nonpartisan, nonpolitical national security professional" focused on Europe and the former Soviet Union. She says the turning point was when she attended the signing of a nuclear treaty between President Ronald Reagan met Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow in 1987.
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