What Went Down On Day 1 Of The Impeachment Hearings

Chiming in from the sidelines to say I disagree with the idea that what matters coming out of the hearings is what’s new. We have seen what happened when these facts were first revealed and covered nonstop by the news media. They’re visible on our tracker. Democratic support of the impeachment hearing is now over 80 percent; Independent support is around 45 percent. The reiteration of these facts may nudge those numbers higher — at the minimum it seems unlikely to drag them lower. I understand that, as journalists, we get bored when we hear the same things over and over; but we are paid to pay attention to all this stuff the moment it comes out. Americans are not. What matters is what Americans tell us, not what we think they might.

Taylor seems to have been raising flags about Ukraine policy with basically everyone, complicating the execution of the Giuliani/Trump policy. It goes to the informal power that executive branch employees have to resist the president’s orders — and this has been frustrating to Trump throughout his presidency. Of course, Trump is getting better at fighting the government employees. Hard to imagine Kent/Taylor will have jobs in U.S. foreign policy if Trump wins a second term.

The section of Taylor’s opening statement where he’s talking about his conversations with Sondland is really, really important. He says Sondland told him that it wasn’t just a White House meeting that hinged on the investigations — “everything” (including security aid) depended on Ukraine’s willingness to publicly announce a probe into the Bidens. Sondland himself hasn’t been an especially reliable witness, though. He had to update his testimony last week after reading about what Taylor and another witness, Tim Morrison, said in closed-door depositions. He now says he did tell Ukrainians that the security assistance likely wouldn’t be released until there was a public announcement about the investigations.