'He Loves Your Ass' Is Part Of Official Impeachment Testimony For The Rest Of Time

Once more for the people in the back! This week, witnesses and key administration officials mentioned there absolutely was quid pro quo (read: bribery) in President Donald Trump’s dealings with the President of Ukraine — and so they have the receipts to prove it. I’ll walk you through this all, yet first, here’s what we knew going into the week:


To catch you up:


President Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to dig up dirt on his potential political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter Biden, while in a July 25 phone call. He allegedly dangled $400 million in aid to the nation along with a personalized meeting between the two leaders as leverage. This all led to a whistleblower complaint and an attempt by Democrats to impeach Trump.


Impeachment proceedings began in private, although, within the past few weeks, have become increasingly public. Numerous White Residence staffers resigned; and Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas, two associates of Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personalized lawyer who worked to dig up dirt on the Bidens, tried to leave the nation and were consequently arrested. A bipartisan committee has heard from witnesses including Ambassador Bill Taylor, the best diplomat in Ukraine; Fiona Hill, Trump’s top Russia advisor; Gordon Sondland, the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union; Laura Cooper, the Pentagon’s top Russia and Ukraine official;


Some of these have spoken to the Committee publicly and others have done so privately yet their transcripts have been released publicly. We’ve seen dogs, we’ve seen drag queens, and we’ve seen the potential ruin of our current democracy.


So what happened this week?


Monday, November 18


There weren’t any public hearings on Monday, yet it worked as a day of preparation for Residence Intelligence officials. We did still find out some new information: Impeachment investigators think Trump may have lied to Robert Mueller in the unique counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to the New York Times. If he did, that would be however another basis for another article of impeachment. This is particularly interesting given that Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi mentioned Trump should testify before the impeachment inquiry committee, even in writing, CNN reported. Trump responded that he didn’t aspire to give “credibility” to the impeachment proceedings however would imagine submitting written answers.


“Even though I did nothing wrong, and don’t like giving credibility to this No Due Process Hoax, I like the idea & will, categorize in attempt to get Congress focused again, strongly imagine it!” he tweeted.


Tuesday, November 19


The public hearings heated up with four testimonies. The morning saw Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the National Security Council’s top Ukraine expert; and Jennifer Williams, an aide to Vice President Mike Pence — both of whom were on that now-infamous call between Trump and Zelensky. In the afternoon, we heard from Kurt Volker, the former special envoy to Ukraine, and Tim Morrison, the former top Russia and Europe expert on the National Security Council.


Vindman is an interesting character. He was place on Earth in Ukraine, and moved to the U.S. With his father and twin brother as a toddler. He would eventually become a Iraq war veteran and Purple Heart recipient. He addressed his father in his initial statement: “You made the correct decision 40 years prior to leave the Soviet Union and come here To the
U.S. Of America in search a higher class of life for our family,” he mentioned. “Do not worry, I am going to be fine for telling the truth.”


Soon after his beginning statement, Vindman testified that he considered Trump's request for Ukraine to investigate the Bidens was “inappropriate.”


“I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” he mentioned of the now-infamous July 25 call. “My worst fear of how our Ukraine policy could play out was playing out.”


There were quite a number of tense moments with Vindman, including any time while he was asked about Trump’s allegation that he was a “Never Trumper,” to which Vindman responded saying he was “never partisan.” Another awkward moment popped up once ranking Republican on the committee, Rep. Devin Nunes, referred to him as “Mr. Vindman;” Vindman reminded Nunes to refer to him at “Lieutenant Colonel.” As CNN reported, Nunes obliged.


It was similarly tense any time it appeared that Nunes was trying to out the whistleblower. (Don’t do that.)


We noticed out some new info, too: Specifically, that Vindman got a job distribute three separate times from Zelensky to be the Ukrainian defense minister. He mentioned he thought it was a joke and announced it to his superiors.


He then testified that the U.S. Withholding military aid was hurting Ukraine’s ability to confront Russian aggression — which was, to be sure, one of the main reasons the U.S. Even gives this aid to Ukraine. Williams also testified that this was the case.


“Any signal or sign that U.S. Support was wavering could be construed by Russia as potentially a possibility for them to strengthen their own hand in Ukraine,” she mentioned, relaying what Zelensky told Pence throughout a meeting on Sept. 1.


Williams also mentioned that the now-infamous July 25 call was concerning, although she didn’t raise her worries with anyone.


In the afternoon session, Volker mentioned he didn’t know of “any linkage between the hold on security assistance and Ukraine pursuing investigations.” He did mention that any concerns about hypothetical involvement in the 2016 elections by Ukraine, or into the Bidens were “conspiracy theories” and that they shouldn't be pursued “as segment of our national security strategy,” per the New York Times. He also admitted that, once he originally drew a “sharp distinction” between Burisma and Joe Biden, he right now realizes that was misguided.


Like Volker, Morrison didn’t visualize anything wrong with the Trump call although did think it was damaging to the public. Morrison also dunked on a witness we’ll hear from on Wednesday (November 20) while he called Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, a disaster and that, internally, the National Security Council called the full situation “the Gordon problem.” It was so much of an allocate in Morrison’s eyes that he mentioned he kept track of Sondland’s whereabouts and work.


Wednesday, November 20


In previous weeks, people on the world wide web lamented that the impeachment proceedings just weren’t interesting enough. They complained the hearings lacked the pizazz required to stir up public interest. Soon after Sondland’s testimony on Wednesday, that might be a challenging case to make.


So let’s give ‘em the ol’ razzle-dazzle, shall we?


Enter Sondland, the prosperous hotelier who donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee and was later named EU ambassador. He delivered a wild testimony implicating… everyone?


Sondland mentioned he worked closest with Giuliani and Trump nevertheless didn’t actually aspire to work with Giuliani), and that each person around him knew what was happening — including Pence. He insisted there was no “shadow government” working on Ukranian deals and that, as an alternative, it was just the typical government doing shady things.


“Everyone was in the loop,” he mentioned. “It was no secret.” Moreover, there was absolutely quid pro quo, he mentioned in his beginning statement.


“I know that members of this committee have frequently framed these complex issues in the form of an eas question: Was there a quid pro quo?” Mr. Sondland mentioned in his first statement. “With regard to the requested White Residence call and White Residence meeting, response The solution is yes.”


He was cautious, yet, to never actually mention whether Trump’s quid pro quo included the $400 million in frozen military aid to Ukraine. “President Trump never notified me directly that the aid was conditioned on the investigations,” Sondland mentioned. “The aid was my own personalized guess based, again, on your analogy: two plus two equals four.”


If we’re being kind, we’d call Sondland’s story evolving; which is to mention, it has changed a number of times. He says he did not remember a lot of what happened because he is “not a note-taker, nor a memo-writer,” yet that his memory was jogged by statistics he obtained from the White Residence and State Department. Among those calls was one with Trump on July 26, in which they “primarily spoke A$AP Rocky.”


He also used wildly vibrant language while in his conversations with Trump, including telling the President that Zelensky “loves your ass.”


While Sondland was giving this testimony, Trump was giving a press conference. Nevertheless his notes were visible, and we saw, in big block handwriting: "I WANT NOTHING I WANT NOTHING I WANT NO QUID PRO QUO."


During the evening session, we heard from Laura Cooper, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia; and David Hale, a state department official. Cooper mentioned that the Ukrainian Embassy was in touch with her personnel about military aid on July 25 — the same day Trump and Zelensky discussed on the phone, plus a month earlier than we previously thought Ukraine knew about the withheld aid, CNN reported. Cooper’s office learned of the hold on July 18 and were told that it was being contained because of corruption in Ukraine.


That evening, we jumped right into the Democratic Presidential Debates, which began with a say of the impeachment proceedings. Each and every person on stage supported the investigation.


Moderator Rachel Maddow first asked Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) if she would attempt to convince her Republican colleagues in the Senate to vote to convict Trump, according to Esquire. She mentioned she would, certainly, do this, and added that “we have to set up the principle: No one is above the law.” She also commented that Sondland, who'd testified earlier that day, didn’t have several qualifications for the job, “except one: He wrote a check for a million dollars. And that tells us about what's happening in Washington, the corruption, how cash buys its way into Washington…. Anyone who wants to give me a big donation, don't ask to be an ambassador, because I'm not going to have that happen.”


Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) added that she has “made it very clear that this is impeachable conduct and I've called for an impeachment proceeding. I just believe our job as jurors is to look at each count and make a decision.”


Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) mentioned, “We can deal with Trump's corruption, nevertheless we also have to stand up for the working families of this nation. We also have to stand up to the fact that our political system is corrupt, dominated by a handful of billionaires, and that our economy is rigged with three people owning more wealth than the bottom half of America.”


Mayor Pete Buttigieg recognized that “the president's already confessed to it on television.”


Later in the debate, once moderator Andrea Mitchell asked Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) to add her suggestion, she affirmed the necessary for impeachment proceedings to move forward and begged the question, “What does this mean for the American people?”


Thursday, November 21


Meet Fiona Hill, the White House’s former top Europe and Russia expert, and David Holmes, an official In America Embassy in Ukraine, who both testified in front of the committee.


There’s one story that pretty much encapsulates everything you should know about Hill before we dive in: years back, as soon as she was attending school in northern England, a classmate set her pigtails on fire throughout a test. She put it out with her hands and finished working, according to a profile in the New York Times.


Throughout her testimony, she criticized Republicans for pushing a “fictional narrative’ that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 elections. “I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interest,” she mentioned. “These fictions are harmful even if they are deployed for purely domestic political purposes.”


She also quoted John Bolton, the national security adviser at the time, as saying, “I am not piece of whichever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.” That drug deal? Exchanging a White Residence meeting and foreign aid for investigations into the Bidens and the 2016 elections.


She also mentioned Sondland was “being involved in a domestic political errand. And we were being involved in national security foreign policy. And those two things had just diverged.”


“I had not put my finger on that at the moment, however I was upset with [Sondland] and furious with him that he wasn't totally coordinating,” she later added. “And I did mention to him, ‘Ambassador Sondland, Gordon, I think this is all going to blow up.’ And here we are.”


Holmes mentioned he thought the military aid hold by Trump was “intended by the president either as an expression of dissatisfaction with the Ukrainians who'd not however abides by the Burisma/Biden investigation, or as a task to improve the pressure on them to do so.”


Holmes — who overheard Sondland’s conversation with the president about A$AP Rocky simply because he and Sondland chose the same restaurant in Kyiv, Ukraine, on July 26 — confirmed that Trump and Sondland did discuss the rapper. He testified that Sondland told Trump to let A$AP Rocky “get sentenced [in Sweden] and play the racism card” and then later “tell the Kardashians you tried.”


Friday, November 22


We’re right now looking forward into what might happen right now that most of the Intelligence Committee's impeachment hearings are pretty much over. Democrats can do one of two things: pursue more testimony and more documents or take what they’ve seen, draw up articles of impeachment, and vote on them, CNN reported. If they pursue more testimony and documents, they may have to go by way of court, as the White Home is blocking some of those. Nancy Pelosi decidedly does not hope to do this, according to the news outlet.


“They keep taking it to court and no, we’re not going to wait up until the courts decide,” Pelosi mentioned Thursday (November 21). “That might be data that’s accessible to the Senate in terms of how far we go and any time we go, however we can’t wait for that because again it’s a technique. It’s obstruction of justice, obstruction of Congress, so we cannot let their further obstruction of Congress be an impediment to our honoring our oath of office.”


that insinuates the Residence could vote to impeach Trump before hearing from some people or seeing important documents. We may even hear the result of an impeachment vote by Christmas.