More Ukrainian shoes dropping

They are the shoes of a trio of Bigfoots: Esper, Pompeo and Bolton.


The New York Times has taken a deeper look into what went on in the White House last summer as Trump insisted on withholding aid to Ukraine in exchange for an announcement of an investigation into Joe Biden and false rumors of 2016 election interference by the Ukraine government. It turns out that it was a much bigger deal than we knew. 

Greg Sargent points out that it's getting harder and harder for Mitch McConnell to justify not calling witnesses in light of what we have learned. He writes:
McConnell badly needs the media’s both-sidesing instincts to hold firm against the brute facts of the situation. If Republicans bear the brunt of media pressure to explain why they don’t want to hear from witnesses, that risks highlighting their true rationale: They adamantly fear new revelations precisely because they know Trump is guilty — and that this corrupt scheme is almost certainly much worse than we can currently surmise.
And he helpfully lays out the story’s key points:
They can't continue to say that there was no pressure on Ukraine or that Trump was withholding the money for normal policy reasons. Everyone in the White House knew this was wrong and possibly illegal. In fact, they went out of their way to try to construct a legal rationale after the fact. (One might call it a "cover-up) 

If Pelosi and the Democrats wanted to let the impeachment articles simmer over the holiday because the crimes are ongoing and new information is trickling out everyday, they made a good decision.

I encourage you to read the whole NYT article. It's very hard to see how they can continue to insist that we don't need to hear from witnesses. If they do they will be making the case for everyone to see that Trump is covering up his crimes and the Republican Senate is helping him do it.

The Democrats can take that argument into 2020 with confidence.


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