What Went Down On Day 1 Of The Impeachment Hearings
The idea of who is in charge is an interesting one too. So on the one hand, of course the president is in charge of the executive branch; that’s spelled out in the Constitution. But people who work for the executive branch are also accountable in some sense to Congress, and certainly to the people and the Constitution. Defenses that the president is “in charge” usually inspire some backlash about the extent and personal nature of presidential power.
To put it bluntly, a political advantage for Republicans of outing the whistleblower would be to attack their background in an attempt to delegitimize the report. The reality is, though, that the inspector general already deemed the report credible and it has been backed up by all the testimony we’ve seen so far.
Who Is George Kent And Why Is He Testifying?
George Kent, a high-level State Department official who oversees U.S. policy for Ukraine, is also on the docket today. And like Taylor, Kent didn’t have direct communications with Trump about Ukraine. But he has already delivered closed-door testimony about many of the same conversations that Taylor has described, including that in order for a White House meeting between Trump and Zelensky to happen, Trump “wanted nothing less than President Zelensky to go to microphone and say investigations, Biden and Clinton.” So Taylor and Kent may be testifying together in part because their accounts reinforce each other.
Kent also had harsh words for Giuliani in his testimony, saying that Giuliani had embarked on a “campaign of lies” against Yovanovitch with the goal of painting her as disloyal to Trump. He’s also testified about Giuliani’s sway with Trump, stating that another official told him that Giuliani “had influence on the president in terms of the way the president thought of Ukraine.”
In his closed-door deposition, Kent did drop a breadcrumb that Republicans might seize on, though. He told investigators that back in 2015, he tried to warn the office of then-Vice President Biden that Hunter Biden’s business ties in Ukraine could create the impression of a conflict of interest, but was shut down. That’s a thread that seems likely to resurface when he’s questioned by Republicans today.