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January 30, 2020

Wednesday's impeachment Q&A session gave Schiff another chance to misquote Trump

By Andrea Widburg

Wednesday's impeachment hearing allowed senators to ask questions of House managers and Trump's attorneys.  For the most part, both sides reiterated their earlier arguments.

At one point, though, Adam Schiff, who had opened the House's unofficial impeachment proceedings by lying about what President Trump said during his telephone call with Ukraine's President Zelensky, introduced a bizarre hypothetical in which he essentially repeated his earlier lie.  This allowed Jay Sekulow, one of the president's attorneys, to remind everyone present what the Obama administration did to candidate Trump.

To set the stage, remember that President Trump released the transcript of his July 25 telephone call with Zelensky.  That transcript revealed that Trump complained that Europeans, especially Germany, were not helping Ukraine as much as Americans do.  Zelenksy agreed.

Trump, a man who knows perfectly well (better than most) how to use the words "I" and "me," then stated, "I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot..."  The italicized language makes it obvious that Trump was trying to get to the bottom of an American problem, not to improve his own standing.

The favor he asked was that Zelensky investigate CrowdStrike, a company that emerged as a significant player in the whole Russia hoax.  Again, Zelensky agreed.

Trump, who had no reason at this point to trust either the DOJ or the FBI, also asked Zelensky to work with Rudy Giuliani, in significant part, said Trump, because he was concerned that former ambassador Yovanovitch was "bad news," as were her contacts — a reasonable statement, given that Yovanovitch apparently bad-mouthed her boss to foreign leaders.  Only then, long after Zelensky had already expressed gratitude for the foreign aid money he was expecting, and without Zelensky knowing that Trump was worried about Ukrainian corruption, did Trump say:

The other thing, there's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it... It sounds horrible to me.

In other words, Trump gave voice to rising concerns in his political party about a video in which Biden boasted that he blocked an investigation into his son's Ukrainian business dealings by threatening to withhold foreign aid.  And that's all Trump said.  No quid.  No pro.  No quo.

But that's not what Schiff described in his opening statement to the House back in September.  He promised House members that he was giving them "the essence of what the president communicated" — and then he lied about every word, turning Trump into a knee-capping mafia don:

 

 

When called upon his lies, Schiff said he was just parodying the president, a peculiar thing to do in a profoundly consequential House proceeding.

Schiff is obviously unrepentant, because he repeated many of the same lies on Wednesday before the Senate.  Offended by what he called the "whataboutism" of references to Obama's "I have more flexibility" promise to Putin via Medvedev, Schiff offered what he promised would be a more apt hypothetical.  In this version, Obama explicitly promises Putin that he will withhold aid to Ukraine if Putin investigates Romney "and announce[s] that you've dug up dirt" on Romney:

 

 

While the hypothetical bears no relationship with the phone call as revealed in the transcript, it does closely align with the lies Schiff told the House in November.

Additionally, as Jay Sekulow, one of Trump's defense attorneys, demonstrated to the Senate, the hypothetical perfectly matches what Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the DNC did to Donald Trump in the 2016 campaign: they approached a foreign national (Steele) for dirt, he got the dirt from another foreign country, and then they announced what they'd dug up in an effort to destroy Trump's campaign:

 

Schiff likely won't change Republican minds with his grandstanding, but it's quite possible that Sekulow's intelligent and apt response will change Democrat minds.

Correction: Crowdstrike was described as a company with Ukrainian ties. The company's offical statement says: CrowdStrike is an American company that was founded in California and is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. CrowdStrike's founders have no connections to Ukraine.

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