Was this an attack of opportunity? Or was this a deliberate setup by Dems who had nothing of substance in the first place?
Trump tweets. It’s what he does.
And the sun comes up in the East every morning. It’s what it does.
But now his tweets have found their way into the Impeachment Proceedings against him. Democrats think they’ve struck gold in their proof of his corruption.
Are they right? Or is it overblown?
And what responsibility does Schiff have for introducing it into the testimony?
Here is the exchange:
Schiff: And now the President in real-time is attacking you. What effect do you think that has on other witnesses' willingness to come forward and expose wrongdoing?
Yovanovitch: It’s very intimidating.
Schiff: Some of us here take witness intimidation very, very seriously. pic.twitter.com/eRX7CamQeP
— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) November 15, 2019
“It was designed to intimidate was it not?” Schiff asked.
Yovanovitch's real-time response to this tweet after Adam Schiff reads it aloud during the hearing.
"I can't speak to what the president is trying to do, but the effect is very intimidating." https://t.co/Pwn1hET0r0
— Casey J. Wooten (@Casey_J_Wooten) November 15, 2019
Seeing as she was in Hearings and not privy to Twitter, the only reason she even KNEW about the Tweet is because Schiff had introduced it to the record.
Here is the Tweet that was objected to:
Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia, how did that go? Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke unfavorably about her in my second phone call with him. It is a U.S. President’s absolute right to appoint ambassadors.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 15, 2019
Schiff conveniently skipped over the key THIRD sentence. The one referencing the new Ukrainian President’s belief that she would not have worked well as with him and his administration as she had with the regime that had just been ousted for corruption.
Because he did NOT want that in the televised soundbites. Schiff believes this is his ‘if the glove doesn’t fit you must acquit’ moment.
This has been — to use Schiff’s favorite word — a televised Smear campaign against the President. This wasn’t written or addressed to the Witness.
This was addressing the public. Trump’s attempt to make HIS case before the American people. And she’s not supposed to even have access to electronic devices during the hearings.
If anyone is making the witness ‘feel intimidated’ it is Schiff himself, by introducing this while she is on the stand.
And now Schiff is announcing there will be a vote after the recess he has called? Before the witness can be cross-examined? What’s that about?
This is a good time to remember Nunes’s opening lines today about 5 people on the panel who have voted in favor of impeachment long before this phone call had been placed. And Schiff’s own fishing expeditions where he went so far as to follow up with pranksters pretending to have ‘Russian kompromat’ and naked pictures of Trump to discredit the President.
What other dirty tricks will he be willing to play?
