Ukraine Advisor Disputes Key Point In Impeachment Testimony — Is This Bad News For Democrats?

Is it bad if the one actual *direct* witness the Democrats have just got his testimony discredited on the day they went forward with Impeachment?

Historians are going to look back at this and wonder if this is stupidity actually happened, or if it’s just some elaborate prank being played on students forced to study this.

The next question will have to be — how could they possibly have been that stupid?

We don’t really have an answer for that, at least, not one any better than the ancient answer people gave to such a question: ‘hubris’.

But the timing couldn’t have been any worse for them.

Time Magazine, who routinely trotted out magazine covers implying Trump was Putin’s personal sock puppet, or at least the stuff of nightmares, interviewed figures actually INVOLVED in the scandal so very important that it’s put everything else on hold for the past few months.

They found the one guy from Ukraine’s government that Sondland claimed to have his supposedly damning side conversation with. The one upon which all of their arguments and innuendo’s ultimately hinge: Top Ukraine Official Andriy Yermak.

And what did they learn from speaking with him?

But in his first interview about those public hearings, Yermak has questioned the recollections of crucial witnesses in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s alleged abuse of his office for political gain.

“Listen, I want to tell you straight,” Yermak told TIME in the interview on Dec. 4, the first time he has openly discussed his views on the public impeachment hearings. “Of course, now, when I watch these shows on television, my name often comes up, and I see people there whom I recognize, whom I met and know,” he says, referring to the witness testimony. “That is their personal opinion, especially the positions they expressed while under oath. I have my own truth. I know what I know.”

He directly contradicts claims made by Sondland, saying the conversation Sondland describes did not actually happen.

“I told Mr. Yermak that I believed that the resumption of U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine took some kind of action on the public statement that we had been discussing for many weeks,” Sondland testified.

This statement was allegedly intended to announce two investigations: one into the discredited claims that Ukraine helped Hillary Clinton’s campaign in the 2016 presidential election, and another related to the work that Hunter Biden, the son of presidential candidate Joe Biden, did for a Ukrainian gas company, Burisma Holdings, while his father was the U.S. Vice President.

Based on the testimony from Sondland and other witnesses, the final report from the House Intelligence Committee concluded last week that Sondland made this offer of a quid pro quo clear to Yermak that day in Warsaw. “Following this meeting, Ambassador Sondland pulled aside President Zelensky’s advisor, Mr. Yermak, to explain that the hold on security assistance was conditioned on the public announcement of the Burisma/Biden and the 2016 election interference investigations,” the report states.

Yermak disputes this. “Gordon and I were never alone together,” he said when TIME asked about the Warsaw meeting. “We bumped into each other in the hallway next to the escalator, as I was walking out.” He recalls that several members of the American and Ukrainian delegations were also nearby, as well as bodyguards and hotel staff, though he was not sure whether any of them heard his brief conversation with Sondland. “And I remember – everything is fine with my memory – we talked about how well the meeting went. That’s all we talked about,” Yermak says.
Source: Time

We already know this impeachment process was a steaming pile of Bull-Schiff from the very beginning. But does this contradiction, made by a direct witness and someone personally involved, whose name was invoked again and again in this testimony throw cold water on the claims of the ONE guy Democrats have put forward as a direct witness?

Better yet, does this open the door to the possibility that the one guy upon whose statements every accusation they’ve made against him ultimately hangs may have actually perjured himself?

Wouldn’t THAT be the perfect cherry on top for this whole ridiculous Kangaroo Court?

He contradicted other testimony as well, including much of what was said about the CNN interview, and why it was canceled. His closing words were:

He added, “Look, we are principled in our position. We did not violate anything. We did not do anything that would amount to crossing a line. At all times we kept our word. We did what we said we would do. So I think it wouldn’t be right to give assessments of what line someone may have approached. We never entered into a conspiracy with anyone. We never participated in any conversations under the carpet. It was all public and transparent.”
Source: Time