When asked if she felt threatened, former Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch answered with a simple, “yes.”
Anyone, to this point, who does not believe the President of the United States has not warranted his own Impeachment is either pouring the water, stirring in the sugar or opening the packages of Kool-Aid. The seriousness of the Impeachment proceedings today gives me pause to say anything that would make light of its’ grave effects on the institutions of American government. The hard-fought freedoms that separate us from the type of corruption in Ukraine, that are secondary to the matter at hand, has to lead the forefront of our thoughts. Let us not forget that the solicitation, bribery, and extortion of a foreign ally, to force their assistance in a made-up conspiracy to malign the current Democratic frontrunner for the presidency, is really what is at issue.
Having said all that, I could not help but be reminded of a hideous incident in the Pittsburgh Steelers/ Cleveland Browns football game last night. With 8 seconds left in the game, Myles Garrett ripped off the helmet of Steelers’ quarterback Mason Rudolph and swung it at his head.
Rudolph threw his hands in the air as if to say; who is going to help me here? In the first half of the morning session under questioning from the Democratic Counsel Daniel Goldman, Marie Yovanovitch described how she wore no helmet, while literally running for her life in a hail of bullets serving as an overseas’ ambassador. In this morning’s probe of the President’s wrongdoing and the surrounding conspiracy theories, she figuratively threw her hands up to the Congressional Committee as if to ask, who is going to help me here.
She looked for that help initially from her immediate boss Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and was told he, [was] “no longer able to help me.” That continuation of intimidation and abandonment of an American servant continued this morning when the President of the United States implicitly renewed the threats with a series of tweets. I was not sure if Ms. Yovanovitch was on the verge of tears when she said, “I mean, after 33 years of service to our country it was terrible. It's not the way I wanted my career to end.” Even the President’s network, Fox, could not deny the obvious,
“This whole hearing turned on a dime when the president tweeted about her real-time, and during the questioning, Adam Schiff stopped the Democratic questioning to read the president’s tweet to her and get her response. Now that enabled Schiff to then characterize that tweet as intimidating the witness or tampering the witness, which is a crime,” said Bret Baier of Fox News.
After the second-half kickoff of the hearings, the Republicans will have no choice but to attack the veracity, the character and the distinguished record and life of Ms. Yovanovitch. They will do this because the truth is not on their side. President Donald Trump traffics in political schemes, criminality, and lies for personal gain. His cohorts have been and are being found guilty of crimes regularly. Manafort, Flynn, Gates, and Papadopoulos. Within the last few hours, self-described dirty trickster Roger Stone has been found guilty of all counts including lying to Congress. Long red ties, hair dye, and numbered orange jumpsuits are quickly becoming the uniform of the day.
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