Is the Schiff Show Really Over?
Bronson Stocking Posted: Nov 21, 2019 10:30 PM
So what's next? Is the Schiff show really over?
There are no scheduled hearings before the House Intelligence Committee, although transcripts of two closed-door testimonies, Diplomat Phillip Reeker and former White House budget official Mark Sandy, still haven't been released by House Democrats. If there was anything in those testimonies that would have helped drive public support for the impeachment, surely we would have heard it by now.
@mystery-ak I read some days ago that lawyers had to go through each written statement to be sure there was no classified information in the statement or in behind closed doors testimony, before it can be released. The above statement you posted, suggests there may have been support of Trump from Reeker and Sandy since the Democrats aren't releasing their testimony. Below is information about what Reeker said and below that information about what Sandy said. Decide for yourself if the below information was vital to be published word for word because it supported Trump and the Dems would not release it. I do not see it to be vital for either party except for Duffey taking over Sandy's job for no reason. He must have had his own reason (likely Trump's order to him) for doing that. Consider the below in "quotes":
https://www.kpbs.org/news/2019/oct/26/us-diplomat-state-department-nixed-plan-to/"Philip Reeker, a U.S. diplomat who oversees European affairs, told House members he had plans of defending Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, in the face of a smear campaign against her, but Reeker was overruled by top State Department officials, according to a person familiar with Reeker's testimony.
In a rare Saturday hearing, Reeker sat for more than eight hours of questions from lawmakers running the impeachment inquiry into President Trump. Reeker appeared under a subpoena issued by House lawmakers, despite being ordered not to cooperate by Trump.
Reeker, a career foreign servicer officer, was named the acting assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of European and Eurasian affairs in March, a few months before Yovanovitch became a political target and was removed from her post.
Just before her ouster, however, Reeker wanted to draft a strongly-worded statement from State Department officials to strike back at the attacks she was enduring in conservative media and by allies of Trump. But that letter was scotched by David Hale, the No. 3 official in the State Department, according to the person familar with Reeker's testimony.
Yovanovitch was seen by Trump allies as an obstacle to conducting a back-channel foreign policy with Ukraine, including the freezing of nearly $400 million in military aid until Ukraine agreed to investigate Trump's political rival Joe Biden and his son. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and has called the impeachment inquiry a scam.
Reeker testified he was aware of a plan to freeze the military aid to Ukraine, but he did not know why it was being held up, having no direct knowledge of the alleged quid-pro-quo scheme, the person close to Reeker said.
Ukrainian policy was mostly overseen by Kurt Volker, Trump's envoy for Ukraine, and Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union. Reeker, who had an extensive travel schedule and is the top State Department official for more than 50 countries, was not intimately involved with Ukraine at the time of the controversial call that sparked the impeachment inquiry, the individual with knowledge of Reeker's testimony said.
Reeker, who joined the State Department in 1992, is celebrated by colleagues as an apolitical professional whose reputation is admired.
"He's regarded as a straight-arrow professional, not a showboat," Dan Fried, a former diplomat who retired in the beginning of the Trump administration, told NPR in an interview. "I've known him for a long time, and I have no idea what his politics are. He's completely non-partisan."
As has been the case with most of the witnesses in the impeachment inquiry, Democrats and Republicans had vastly different take-aways.
Democratic Rep. Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts said Reeker's questioning lasted much longer than anticipated because it was "a much richer reservoir of information than we originally expected," but he would not elaborate."
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Sandy:(consider the below in "quotes"
https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/16/politics/mark-sandy-deposition-impeachment-inquiry/index.htmlWhite House budget official Mark Sandy Mark Sandy arrived on Capitol Hill Saturday for a more than five-hour closed-door deposition in the House impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.
He spoke about how unusual of a process it was that a political appointee came in, took over the apportionment process and placed a hold on the military aid, a source told CNN.
CNN previously reported that Michael Duffey, the OMB's associate director for national security programs and a Trump political appointee, signed at least some of the documents delaying aid to Ukraine, according to two sources.
Normally a career budget official signs such documents.Sandy testified that he raised questions to the OMB general counsel about whether the move violated the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, the source said. He would not discuss what the OMB general counsel said because of concerns it could violate privilege. This past summer, the Trump administration took the unusual step of freezing nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine -- intended in part to help the country counter Russian aggression -- before the President's July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The administration eventually released the military aid in September after congressional Republicans raised concerns and the White House was made aware of a whistleblower complaint about the July call.
On Saturday, Democrats wanted to learn more from Sandy about how the process of disbursing military aid normally works and why
suddenly this process was different. Another source familiar with Sandy's testimony described him as a reluctant witness, but one who saw it as his duty to come in and technically explain to congressional investigators what happened from his vantage point. Sandy is a bureaucrat who saw the process going off the rails, but didn't necessarily ask questions, the source told CNN in describing Sandy's knowledge of the freezing of military aid to Ukraine.
When Duffey, who oversees the office Sandy works in, sidelined him,
Sandy told lawmakers he was told that Duffey wanted to learn more about how the process worked and so would be taking over the particular issue, according to the source. Sandy also told lawmakers he tried to explain to Duffey that it wasn't necessary to take over the account to learn about and understand the process, the source said, but Duffey, who was new to OMB, insisted otherwise.When questions began to surface about why the aid was held, the eventual explanation given was that the Trump administration wanted to see what other countries were contributing and make sure it was equitable.
But Republicans emerged from the proceedings contending Sandy gave Democrats no information to bolster their inquiry into whether the aid was deliberately mishandled to help Trump's political chances. GOP Rep. Lee Zeldin said Democrats have an even "deader case" after Saturday's testimony."
