A couple of weeks into the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump’s pressure on Ukraine to help him take down his political opponents, the patterns are familiar. House Democrats issue subpoenas, Trump’s administration and his allies refuse to honor them. House Democrats continue interviewing witnesses, often over the fierce opposition of the Trump administration. And every day we learn more sordid details about just what Trump was up to.
● Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer (of a sort) and Ukraine pressure agent, defied a congressional subpoena on Tuesday, and on Wednesday House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer for some reason ruled out using the power of inherent contempt to force Giuliani to comply or face actual consequences. That was the good news for Giuliani on Wednesday. The bad news was that yet another of his associates was arrested, and news broke that Giuliani himself is the subject of a counterintelligence investigation into his Ukraine dealings.
● The Department of Defense used official White House talking points to refuse to comply with a subpoena. So we’ve got the military digging in its heels against civilian oversight, which is … scary. Also digging in his heels, predictably, is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who suddenly doesn't believe in congressional authority but really, really cares about norms. Which is to say, McConnell continues to be among the most cold-blooded and dishonest people in the Republican Party, and an unapologetic partisan who’ll go to the mat for Trump despite their extreme differences of personal style and even political priorities.
● Kurt Volker, the former special envoy to Ukraine, made a surprise appearance on Capitol Hill, alongside former State Department adviser Michael McKinley—they being former administration officials whom the White House hasn’t managed to block from testifying. Gordon Sondland, the current ambassador to the European Union, is expected to testify on Thursday, as details leak out about just how recklessly he has behaved in pursuit of Trump’s desire for Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 elections. Sondland’s role there is part of a larger pattern in which experienced diplomats were pushed aside to hand U.S. policy in Ukraine over to people whose expertise was not in diplomacy or the politics of the region but rather in, yes, making Donald Trump happy. And that very much includes Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who’s basically destroying the State Department from within.
That’s a lot of corruption and party-above-country for one day … and this was a comparatively slow day in impeachment news.