Thread by @awprokop

This is what Kent brings to the hearing for Democrats: a clearly-stated narrative that corrupt Ukrainian officials (Lutsenko and Shokin) won Giuliani's ear with a campaign of lies.

And: an insistence that US policy did not in fact help Burisma during the Obama years.

Taylor, meanwhile, has more firsthand knowledge of the key events at the heart of the scandal.

He says in the opening, he is not here to take one side or the other on impeachment, and his purpose is "to provide facts."

Those facts, though, are quite damning.

Taylor is sticking pretty closely to the opening statement he gave in his deposition last month, but he's making some changes.

Here he adds to this that the irregular channel was "unaccountable to Congress" and added Mick Mulvaney as being part of it

New and very big. By this account, Trump managing Sondland directly, Sondland blatantly saying it's about the Bidens

https://twitter.com/Phil_Mattingly/status/1194646339142987776

If Taylor's aide's account is true, it would explain *why* Sondland has had so many recollection failures — namely, because he was acting on Trump's direct instructions all along, and that's what he was trying to hide.

vox.com/policy-and-pol…

Taylor says he understands that his extensive notes on all this "may be coming" to Congress. (State Department hasn't turned them over yet.)

Sondland's public testimony next week is really his last chance, no more do-overs after that one. Either he's enshrined to a national audience as Trump's amnesiac defender, or...

https://twitter.com/byaaroncdavis/status/1194660069541056517

Nunes now seems to be making a second opening statement. No questions to the witnesses yet

Nunes, and now GOP staffer Castor, attempting to argue that Trump had good reasons to distrust the Ukrainians.

But investigating Biden?

Trying to advance "The Ukrainians/Zelensky saw nothing wrong, weren't bothered by Trump's request" talking point

https://twitter.com/blakehounshell/status/1194677906733187072

Probably best for GOP if they focus all their questioning on Burisma/Hunter Biden being bad. Those are fair points!

Problem for them is that Kent will also testify that this had nothing to do with US policy toward Ukraine under Obama.

Castor: [The irregular channel of US diplomacy toward Ukraine] is not as outlandish as it could be, correct?

Taylor, laughing, confirms that it is at least theoretically possible for things to get even more outlandish.

Jordan is repeatedly reading this sentence from Sondland's testimony addendum very quickly, in the hopes that saying the names "Morrison" and "Taylor" a bunch of times will confuse people

Jordan keeps saying to Taylor, weren't you wrong about security aid being tied to investigation? Since aid was released on Sept 11, without an investigation announcement?

(Obvious response would be: there may have been a sudden change of plans. Taylor not speculating there tho)

Jordan is seizing on an ambiguity in the factual record — we still don't know why Trump let the aid go through on Sept 11.

But many things happened just before then — IG wrote to Schiff, Bolton resigned, Schiff opened Rudy probe, Taylor expressed concerns vox.com/2019/11/12/209…

Some responding to this with, didn't we learn Bolton released the aid?

There is a Bloomberg report suggesting something like that happened with *part* of the aid (the State Dept part). But we haven't yet seen witness testimony really nailing that down bloomberg.com/news/articles/…