What Went Down On Day 1 Of The Impeachment Hearings

To what Micah said at the beginning of this chat, Goldman just drew a straight line between “quid pro quo” and some offenses that the Constitution says are impeachable: “Regardless of what you call it, whether it’s a quid pro quo, bribery, extortion…”

Taylor: “There was a feeling by President Trump … that he had a feeling of having been wronged by the Ukrainians. This was something he thought they owed him to fix that wrong.”

Taylor said a few minutes ago that throughout his long career, he’s never seen foreign aid conditioned on an investigation of a political opponent in the U.S. That might seem like a small point, but it helps undercut the idea that asking for this kind of “favor” is just how diplomacy works. Taylor, Kent and other witnesses have all stressed just how abnormal this request and the pressure campaign was.