JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

If you didn’t hear U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff’s closing statement Tuesday evening, at the conclusion of Day 3 of the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment hearings, you missed a great speech. Schiff spoke passionately, eloquently and without notes for nearly eight minutes.

The statement came after several hours of testimony by Kurt Volker, the former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine, and Tim Morrison, who was a National Security Council official until he resigned on the eve of his private testimony last month.

Here is the transcript of Schiff’s statement…

I thank you both for your testimony today. I would highlight a couple of things about what we have heard this afternoon. First, Ambassador Volker, your written testimony, in which you say, in hindsight, “I now understand that others saw the idea of investigating possible corruption involving the Ukrainian company Burisma as equivalent to investigating former Vice President Biden. I saw them as very different, the former being appropriate and unremarkable, the latter being unacceptable.” And, in retrospect, you said, “I should have seen that connection differently, and had I done so, I would have raised my own objections.”

That’s where we are today. Ambassador, we appreciate your willingness to amend your earlier testimony in light of what you now know. I think you made it very clear that knowing what you know today that, in fact, the president sought an investigation of his political rival, Vice President Biden, and you would not have countenanced any effort by the Ukrainians to engage in such conduct.

I appreciate also that you are able to debunk, I hope for the last time, the idea that Joe Biden did something wrong and that he, in accordance with U.S. policy, sought to replace a corrupt prosecutor, something that not only the U.S. State Department wanted, and not only the European Union wanted, and not only the IMF (International Monetary Fund) wanted but was the consensus position of the United State national security infrastructure. You did not get a lot of questions about that because, I think, you effectively said that was all nonsense. We appreciate your candor about that.

Mr. Morrison, I think what’s most remarkable about your testimony is the acknowledgment that, immediately after the vice president met with President Zelensky in Warsaw, you witnessed Gordon Sondland meeting with Andrey Yermak, a top adviser to President Zelensky, and then immediately thereafter Sondland told you that he had informed the Ukrainians that if they wanted that $400 million in aid, they were going to have to do those investigations that the President wanted.

You were later informed — this is also significant as you testified here today — that Ambassador Sondland, in his subsequent conversations with President Trump, had informed you that it wasn’t going to be enough for the Ukrainian prosecutor general to announce the investigations the president wanted. President Zelensky had to do it himself if he wanted to get that aid, let alone the meeting with the White House.

You’ve been asked to opine on the meaning of the term bribery, although you weren’t asked to opine on the terms high crimes and misdemeanors. But bribery, for those watching at home, is the conditioning of official acts in exchange for something of personal value. The official acts we’re talking about here are a White House meeting President Zelensky desperately sought and was deeply important to his country at war with Russia, to show the United States had this new president’s back.

That meeting was important. That meeting is an official act. The military assistance is even more significant because Ukrainians are dying every day in their war with Russia. And so, the withholding of military assistance to get these investigations, which you now have acknowledged, Ambassador Volker, was wrong for the President to request. The idea of withholding that military aid to get these political investigations should be anathema, repugnant to every American because it means the sacrifice, not just of the Ukrainian national security, but American national security for the interests of the president personally and politically.

Now my Republican colleagues, all they seem to be upset about with this is not that the President sought an investigation of his political rival — not that he withheld a White House meeting to pressure Ukraine. Their objection is that he got caught! Their objection is that someone blew the whistle, and they would like this whistle blower identified. The President wants the whistle blower punished.

That’s their objection — not that the President engaged in this conduct — that he got caught! Their defense is, well, he ended up releasing the aid. Yes, after he got caught! It doesn’t make this any less odious. Americans may be watching this and asking, “Why should we care about Ukraine?” And this was the import, I think, of the conversation in that Kiev restaurant, with Gordon Sondland holding that phone away from his head because the President was talking so loud.

What does the President ask in that call the day after that call he had with Zelensky? What did he ask on that cellphone call? Not whether the Rada (the Ukrainian parliament) had passed anti-corruption. No…Are the Ukrainians going to do the investigation. And Sondland’s answer is…they’re going to do it; they’ll do anything, essentially, the President wants.

What’s more telling is the conversation, I think, the foreign service officer (David) Holmes has afterwards with Sondland in which the President says basically that President Trump doesn’t give an expletive about Ukraine. He cares about the big things. Mr. Holmes says, “Well, Ukraine’s at war with the Russians; that’s a big thing.” And Sondland’s answer is, no, he cares about big things that affect his personal interests.

That’s why Americans should care about this. Americans should care about what happens to our allies, who are dying. Americans should care about their own national security and their own President and their own Constitution. And they will need to ask themselves — as we will have to ask ourselves in Congress — “Are we prepared to accept that the President of the United States can leverage official acts — military assistance, White House meetings — to get an investigation of a political rival?” Are we prepared to say, “Well, I guess that’s what we should expect of a President”?

I don’t think we want to go there. I don’t think our founding fathers would have wanted us to go there. Indeed, when the founding fathers provided a remedy, that remedy being impeachment, they had the very concern that a President of the United States may betray the national security interests of the country for personal interests. They put that remedy in the Constitution not because they wanted to willy-nilly overturn elections. No, because they wanted a powerful anti-corruption mechanism when that corruption came from the highest office in the land.

We are adjourned.