What Went Down On Day 1 Of The Impeachment Hearings

I wonder if, for theatrical purposes, Democrats would have been better off not leaking the details from Taylor’s closed-door testimony. This would all be explosive news if we hadn’t heard it before, but I don’t think it landed with quite the same oomph as it would have if it had broken live on national TV.

Mulvaney (who as readers may recall ordered the freeze on the security assistance) “maintained a skeptical view of Ukraine,” according to Taylor. Another witness, former White House official Catherine Croft, has also testified that Mulvaney briefly halted the sale of Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine last year because he was concerned that “Russia would react negatively to the provision of Javelins to the Ukraine.”

There has been a lot of reporting lately that Republicans could throw Giuliani, Sondland, etc., under the bus to save the president. The more instances of Trump being directly involved, the less likely that strategy is to work.