Day One of the Public Impeachment Hearings

During the first day of public hearings in the impeachment inquiry into the president’s conduct regarding Ukraine, the ranking members of the House intelligence committee made several statements that lacked context and required more information.

House Democrats launched the public sessions on Nov. 13, with testimony from William Taylor, the charge d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, and George Kent, deputy assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs in the State Department, both of whom had testified previously to House committees behind closed doors. 

The impeachment inquiry was triggered by a whistleblower complaint that accused President Donald Trump of “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.” The complaint cites a July 25 phone call that Trump had with the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, in which Trump asked Zelensky to investigate Democrats and a potential campaign rival, Vice President Joe Biden. At the time of the call, the administration was withholding congressionally appropriated security assistance funding to Ukraine.

Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House intelligence committee, and Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, the ranking minority member of the committee, highlighted certain events in their opening statements and their questioning:

• Nunes said the Obama administration had provided “blankets” to Ukraine, not lethal aid. It’s true that administration didn’t provide lethal weapons, as the Trump administration has. But the Obama administration did provide nonlethal military aid, including training, vehicles and radar equipment.
• Nunes said the original whistleblower “was acknowledged to have a bias against President Trump.” The intelligence community inspector general said the whistleblower did have “an arguable political bias,” but that the whistleblower’s complaint “appears credible.”
• Nunes said the Democrats at a prior hearing gave “a purely fictitious rendition of the president’s phone call” with Zelensky. He’s referring to Schiff, who at the hearing indicated that he was not giving an exact reading of the president’s call, but rather “the essence” of the president’s intentions in “not so many words.”
• Schiff said the White House took the “extraordinary step” to move a memo of Trump’s call with Zelensky to a “highly classified server.” It’s true that it was placed in a more