Don’t Get Your Hopes Up

The public Impeachment hearings begin next week.  Don’t get your hopes up.

All we have heard so far are the digested summaries from the talking heads.  The transcripts have been posted all right, but how many people have read them? There is a great deal of difference between the highlights presented by one side – either side – and the totality as presented in a full hearing. Remember how we couldn’t wait for Robert Mueller’s testimony?  What happened there?  And don’t forget the disaster of Corey Lewandowski. 

I happen to be home and recovering from some surgery so I have the time to delve into the actual transcripts of the witnesses. Don’t give me too much credit (or insult) though. I’m not crazy.  I only read one – William Taylor, the top diplomat in Ukraine.  Reports are that he will be the Committee’s key witness.

Well, get ready for that.

Oh, Taylor surely said all the things that the talking heads reported.  He confirmed his understanding that military aid for Ukraine would not be released until their government agreed to conducting the investigations that the US wanted. Standing on its own, that certainly hurts the President.

But, then, contrary to the Republican talking point that it could not participate in these close door hearings, their counsel conducted his own examination.  And he did a pretty good job. Some of the concessions he elicited from Taylor were: (1) that he never talked to the President about any of this; (2) that there were credible press reports that Ukrainian officials were, in fact, anti-Trump in 2016; and (3) that Ukraine did not know that the aid was actually being withheld until after the infamous Trump call.

Don’t get your hopes up.

All of this possible difficulty, however, could be avoided.  As I’ve said before, the Impeachment inquiry has lost focus. The chorus of “quid pro quo” should be silenced. It’s not necessary. It is a fundamental rule of trial law that the best way to present a case is the simplest way.  Don’t complicate.  Don’t try to prove more than you have to.

It’s better if a quid pro quo could be readily established, but without it, we still have the request by the Orange Menace of a foreign government to aid his private political interests.  It’s right there in the phone call.  No complications.  

Have we already forgotten what the Mueller investigation was all about?  The question was whether Trump colluded with a foreign government, that time Russia, for help in his election. Had Mueller said “yes”, Impeachment would have been more than likely. But, the day after Mueller said “no”, the Ignoramus in the Oval did precisely what he’d just been absolved of – he asked Ukraine for private political help.  That should be all we need.  But, the Democrats have screwed it up.  They have complicated it.  They have lost focus.  And now we need to worry about the nuances and ambiguities that will surely arise in the public hearings next week.

I hope I’m wrong.  I hope by this time next week Lindsay Graham will be packing Trump’s bags for him.  

But, I doubt it.