November 25, 2019
Unraveling the Impeachment Inquiry Testimony
By Jonathan Cohen
The several days of hearings produced lots of melodrama but no direct evidence that President Trump held up aid to Ukraine to pressure the Ukraine to investigate meddling in the 2016 election or the company Burisma that hired Hunter Biden to its Board of Directors. There were hints and presumptions, but the only factual evidence was Trump’s firm statement to Gordon Sondland that there was no quid pro quo.
National Review’s Rich Lowry has suggested that with more patience, the Democrats could have compelled testimony from Bolton, Mulvaney and Giuliani that would have confirmed their suspicions. Lowry is not a fan of impeachment, but his argument is that it was a fool’s errand for the House Republicans to argue there was no quid pro quo. He, and many others such as Representative Hurd are more at ease with the argument that Trump’s actions fall far short of an impeachable offense. Whatever the political merits of Lowry’s point, a close look at the actual fact pattern contained in the hearing testimony suggest that Trump never offered to schedule a meeting or stop the hold on aid in return for a public announcement of the desired investigations.
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https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/11/unraveling_the_impeachment_inquiry_testimony_.html
