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

U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff of California closed Day 4 of the impeachment hearings with another gut punch to President Donald Trump. His seven-minute closing statement followed the day’s second session, which featured testimony from Defense Department official Laura Cooper and State Department official David Hale.

Here’s Schiff’s closing statement, which I recorded and then transcribed.

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Democrat Adam Schiff and Republican Devin Nunes on at Wednesday’s impeachment hearing (NYT photo by Doug Mills)

I’ll be brief this evening. It’s been a long day, and I said most of what I wanted to say earlier in the day. But I did want to end this evening. And first of all thank you both for your testimony and your long service to the country. We are grateful that you answered the lawful process of a congressional supboena.

I wanted to share a few reflections on two words that have come up a lot in the course of these hearings. Those words are corruption and anti-corruption. We are supposed to believe, I imagine, listening to my colleagues, that Donald Trump is a great anti-corruption fighter; that his only concern about Ukraine was that it would fight corruption. But let’s look at that argument. Let’s look at the President’s words, and let’s look at his deeds.

Ambassador (Marie) Yovanovitch was an anti-corruption champion. No one has contradicted that that has come forward to testify here. She was a champion. And on the day she is at a meeting acknowledging in Ukraine another anti-corruption champion — a woman who had acid thrown in her face and died a painful death after months — she is called back to Washington because of a vicious smear campaign by the President’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, among others. She is recalled.

That is not anti-corruption; that is corruption. And one of the people responsible for this smear campaign, in addition to Mr. Giuliani — and it is a long and sordid list of those who were involved — is a man named Lutsenko (Yuriy Lutsenko, a former prosecutor general of Ukriane), someone who the minority’s own witness acknowledges has a poor reputation as self-serving and corrupt.

And what do we see about Mr. Lutsenko and his predecessor, Mr. (Viktor) Shokin? What does the President have to say about these corrupt former prosecutors? He praises them! He says they were treated very unfairly. That’s not anti-corruption; that’s corruption!

And when Ambassador Sondland testified today there was unquestionably a quid pro quo and everybody knew it, conditioning a White House meeting that Ukraine desperately wanted to show its friend and foe alike it had the support of the President of the United States, when that was conditioned — an official act was conditioned on the receipt of things of value to the President’s political investigations — that was not anti-corruption, that was corruption!

And when Ambassador Sondland testified today that he could put two and two together and so can we, that there was also a quid pro quo on the military aid — that aid was not going to be released unless he did a public statement of these political investigations the President wanted — that’s not anti-corruption; that is corruption!

And let’s look at the President’s words on that phone call — that infamous phone call on July 25. Does he ask President Zelensky, “How’s that reform coming in the Rada (the Ukrainian parliament)? What are you doing to root out corruption? What about that new anti-corruption court?” Of course not! Of course not! Are we really to believe   that was his priority. No! What does he ask? “I want you to do us a favor: Investigate this crazy 2016 server conspiracy, that the server is somewhere in Ukraine.” And, more ominously, “Investigate the Bidens.” That’s not anti-corruption; that is corruption.

And the next day, when he’s on the phone to Ambassador Sondland in that outdoor restaurant in Kiev, what does he want to know about? Does he want to know about how Zelensky is going to fight corruption? Of course not! The only thing he brings up in that call is the investigation he wants into the Bidens. That’s not anti-corruption; that is corruption.

Every now and then there’s a conversation that really says all you need to know. And sometimes it doesn’t seem all that significant, but I’ll tell you, this one really struck me. It was a conversation Ambassador Volker related in his testimony. It was a conversation just this past September, when he’s talking to Andriy Yermak (top adviser to President Zelensky). And he’s advising him, as indeed he should, “You know, you may not want to go through with an investigation or prosecution of former President (Petro) Poroshenko. Engaging in political investigations is really not a good idea.” And you know what Yermak says? “Oh, you mean like you want us to do of the Bidens and the Clintons?”

Well, there’s a word for that, too. And it’s not corruption or anti-corruption; it’s called hypocrisy. And this is the problem here: We do have an anti-corruption policy around the world. And the great men and women in your department, Undersecretary Hale, and in your department, Ms. Cooper, they carry that message around the world: that the United States is devoted to the rule of law. But when they see a President of the United States who is not devoted to the rule of law, who is not devoted to anti-corruption, but instead demonstrates in word and deed corruption, they are forced to ask themselves, “What does America stand for any more?”

That concludes this evening’s hearing.